Ravenous Fig

Gluten Free, Animal Free Pad Thai.

There is a corner of the pantry in my kitchen where ingredients go to die. Once used and quickly forgotten, they sit and wait to be cooked with another day, only to long pass their expiration date and have their flavor degrade to something south of sawdust.

That is where I found our jar of refined coconut oil hiding. Lucky for us, it stubbornly refuses to suffer the fate of its neighbors in the Corner We Do Not Speak Of. After months of neglect, it’s still good as new. (As long as you don’t mind it looking like a mess of rubber cement with grits floating in it.) I’ll get back to the coconut oil in a bit…

Yesterday I was rifling through my stack of cookbooks on the hunt for some gluten free tapas recipes. We’re throwing a tapas party for the Relevance crew in a couple of weeks, and there’s at least one gluten-free guest coming.

This got me thinking about the reasons people choose a gluten-free diet — some for allergies, some for Celiac disease, and some for general health. All that to say I decided to spend a couple of weeks being more cognizant of the gluten in my diet, and cutting back intentionally to see if there is a measurable difference in how I feel or how my skin reacts.

Over the next week or two, I’ll be choosing gluten-free options for lunch and dinner (and breakfast, after that hunk of coffee cake I just made is gone — darn). Tonight’s dish was both vegan and gluten-free, but also completely delicious and worth making if you love Pad Thai.

Which brings me back to the refined coconut oil. It’s a wonderful alternative cooking oil for high-heat applications, making it great for stir frying the tofu and vegetables in Pad Thai. Use it, love it, and don’t forget about it in the back of your pantry.

Continued after the jump. »

It’s tomato week here at the Kite house. It’s been about 4 months since Vance and I had two “normal” weeks together, home alone, without travel, without company, without places to go and hotels to stay in — so I finally had a chance to plan the Saturday through Thursday meals (Friday we let someone else cook). Suffice it to say that the week’s produce haul included at least $15 worth of local heirloom tomatoes.

On top of being tomato week, it’s also veggie week. Durham has so many local, sustainable options for meat that we’ve been consuming far more than our usual share of land animals. Acme, Six Plates, Dos Perros, and Piedmont (to name a few) have treated us well, but also left us with the urge to drink copious amounts of ginger tea at the end of the night. With that in mind, we’re eating plenty of grain salad, soup and veg for a few days.

In preparation for our first Relevance “family” dinner, we’re also cooking our way through the menu, starting with the gazpacho. This Andalusian gazpacho is one I served to Vance when he took a train from Florida for our third anniversary. It’s silky smooth and deceptively simple. Serve it with some crusty bread and a bit of olive oil for a light meal that will leave you feeling refreshed.

One of the best parts about our recent move is Durham’s proximity to Western North Carolina (relative to the drive we used to have to make from Orlando, that is). Brevard (about a half-hour outside of Asheville) is one of my favorite small towns — great antique stores, antique cars, a few local restaurants, and plenty of hiking and mountain biking to be had.

This peach salsa adds tons of natural sweetness and color to simple dishes.

We’re enjoying a little time out here for the 4th, which means a change in diet to match the rest of the family, which means meat at every sitting. (Ah, meat belly.) Of course we’re sticking to the humanely raised rule, but that doesn’t help it all to feel less heavy. Anyone who’s switched from being vegetarian (or mostly) to eating meat one or more times a day can vouch for that one.

For that, we turn back to veg. Specifically, we turned to freshly made salsa. Being peach season in the South, Vance and I came up with the idea to do a grilled peach salsa with roasted red peppers, basil, and mint to top off our portion of protein. This recipe ended up being a great way to bring a little freshness back into our diets, not to mention adding a little flare to the dinner.

Salsa or no salsa, I’m going to need a major helping of greens tomorrow. I’m starting to feel like a caveman.

Celebrate strawberry season with some homemade strawberry soda!

I have to admit, working up the motivation to create a fantastic meal is a lot harder when you’re cooking for one. It’s been three years (this week! hooray!) since I married Vance and in that time I’ve always had someone with whom to share meals, help with the cleanup, and take care of leftover consumption. So today, after cooking up breakfast and lunch for myself, I couldn’t bear the thought of washing another dish.

That spring risotto with local snap peas and asparagus I had planned will have to wait. (I treated myself to a solo dinner at Vin Rouge instead — it’s becoming a regular favorite of mine for moments of weakness when I’m in no mood to prepare dinner). In the meantime, there are a couple of easy, painless, one-dish things I’ve been making this week that I’d love to share.

First, it’s strawberry season here. Some friends from the office went strawberry picking at Waller Family Farm this week and picked the most delicious, sweet strawberries I’ve ever tasted. A small crowd gathered around a bowl of them Friday afternoon marveling at how good they were — and that’s saying a lot considering the six candy dispensers perched nearby. Strawberry season ended a while ago back in Florida, so it’s exciting to see them still growing strong here this far into spring. To celebrate, I put together a concoction I’m calling Strawberry Soda, however un-soda-like it may be.

Baked Eggs with Tomato Sauce and local Asiago cheese

I also made baked eggs with tomato sauce a couple of times this week, using the tomato sauce from last week’s Asparagus and Chèvre Crêpes with Tomato Sauce. Both of these recipes are hardly recipes at all; they’re merely simple preparations of some basic ingredients. But seeing as how I was on the verge of a tantrum at the thought of washing another dish today, these will have to do! Continued after the jump. »

Fresh, local asparagus. Three words you'd never find in a farmer's market in Florida.

So, I’ve been away for a while. After the Hacker News résumé debacle, my tendency was to go dark, wait it out, and come up for air when it was all over.

Well, it’s all over now. I left my company, packed up the house, and moved to Durham, NC. It sounds so simple written in that way, but this was one of the biggest decisions I’ve ever had to make, leaving behind friends and family (and Vance, temporarily) to set up life in a new place. Durham is nowhere near where we wanted to be, yet everything we were looking for in a city at the same time. Everywhere I turn there’s a market selling local eggs, dairy, or produce. The weather is mild (save for the tornadoes); the house is amazing, save for the occasional lack of hot water; and the area is saturated with brilliant minds and eco-conscious hippie types. There are huge, old trees lining my drive into downtown, and birds of every size and shape singing me awake in the morning. As soon as there’s a Stumptown around the block and public transit to get me there, I’d say we’re exactly where we’ve wanted to be but didn’t know it.

Tomato sauce in the French tradition. It fills your house with amazing smells for hours.

While Vance is wrapping up the school year back in Orlando, I’ve been checking out the local food scene, taking notes, and working up the motivation to return to blogging by reading through my stack of cookbooks over and over again. As with my frequent, frustrating design blocks, sometimes I just need to admire other people’s work to set off a spark of inspiration in my own mind. So Friday’s lunch at Rue Cler finally did me in: asparagus and chèvre crêpe, smothered in a rich, complex tomato sauce. (Can I just stop for a moment and marvel at the caliber of food you can get for eight bucks in Durham?)

It's a terrible photo, but I thought you should see what it looked like before I devoured it!

This dish is what I’m beginning to love about the city — simple, honest food that is unpretentious but at the same time exceptional. After I came across a sweet farmer from Hillsborough selling asparagus at the Durham Farmer’s Market, I simply had to reinterpret it back at home. Next time, I’ll pick up some local goat cheese, but for this go-around I was thrilled to highlight local asparagus and tomatoes in the dish. And as always, the herbs are local (from the very young but thriving herb garden right outside my front door!)

All that to say I’m still alive, still cooking, still eating… Just a little slow to get back into a routine after being knocked out of one for so long. I hope you enjoy this crêpe as much as I did!

These scones are the perfect combination of crunchy, sweet, and wholesome. Get them while they're hot!

Crazy weeks have a tendency to make me… well, a little bit crazy. I’m constantly analyzing, constantly predicting what will happen next (and probably constantly wrong)! It’s hard to think about what to make for breakfast when there’s a four foot monkey on my back. Which is why last weekend was so nice — I woke up in the morning from a dream about these lovelies, and I had to make them.

Somehow baking has this way of bringing me back down to earth. Maybe it’s the exactness of the knife scraping extra flour off the cup measure to make precise, scientific measurements (what, you don’t do that?); maybe it’s the chemistry that happens when leavening agents mix with a handful of raw ingredients to produce something smile-inducing. Either way, these scones marked the beginning of a perfect Sunday last week.

It’s a happy thing when fate smiles upon us and all of the ingredients for a recipe are hanging out in our kitchen just waiting for us to swirl them together into a masterpiece of foodstuff. Whole wheat pastry flour, the last of a somewhat questionable carton of buttermilk, even turbinado sugar were all standing by when I stumbled down the stairs into the kitchen in my PJs and a nappy hairdo.

An hour later I had some of the most delicious — dare I say moist — scones I’ve ever tasted. We brought some extras with us to the park to give to Jon and Kendra, who promptly inhaled them after changing Ezra’s third public diaper explosion of the day. Success. Continued after the jump. »

Crispy Gnocchi with Romesco and Melting Tuscan Kale

The last couple of days have been bizarre, to say the least. If you found Ravenous Fig via Hacker News, you know what I mean. If not, there’s a pretty fantastic recipe in here for you that will hopefully make up for lost time.

Let’s rewind. For my birthday last month, Vance took me to Atlanta to visit some friends who just had the most adorable baby boy. Seriously. He makes the Gerber baby look like an elephant calf with angler fish teeth. We stayed at a sweet bed & breakfast in Midtown, which was a great comfort considering how sick I’d get before we left.

Romesco Sauce is thickened with bread and nuts to give it a nice body and texture.

These flu-like symptoms kind of snuck up on me. I tried to pretend it wasn’t happening and power through, but by the last night I was sitting in the bottom of the bathtub letting the hot water beat on my back as I coughed up Lord-knows-what. Not the best way to spend a vacation, but I got some good magazine time in while I was holed up in the room, specifically with La Cucina Italiana. Continued after the jump. »

Look for firm, creamy-white florets that are tight and without brown speckles.

For the first time in weeks, Vance and I have gotten to go to our Saturday farmer’s market. It’s one of those farmer’s markets that’s open year-round and serves fruits and veggies that could be from anywhere (most are not from within 100 miles). But we have to go to get our bagel fix from Davis Bakery (which has since been sold and will never be the same but we try not to think about that too much). Anyway, I consider it a bit of a personal challenge whenever we go to find something local to take home.

This week, it was cauliflower. Cauliflower’s one of those things that’s a bit of a blank canvas. You can roast it, eat it raw, cut it like steak and smother it in tomato sauce, turn it into low-carb mashed potatoes, or whazz it up into a luscious, creamy soup. Today, as part of our monthly Fancy Feast, I decided to do the latter.

The finished soup and parmesan tuile.

This was served among five other dishes in a tapas style spread, all but one of which were total winners (if you’re lucky, I’ll be disciplined enough to get them all posted to the blog!) Somehow this simple, fast soup made it to the top of Vance’s list — the top two of mine. And now that I know how simple and delicious it is, it’ll be appearing on our menu just about as often as I can snag some local cauliflower from the market.

Continued after the jump. »

Three weeks ago I was busy making caramels, wrapping last-minute Christmas gifts, and waxing nostalgic about Christmases years ago, when my family would pack up and head to Memphis for our annual Christmas gathering. I truly miss Christmas in Memphis, all of us under one roof for a few precious hours. I jump at any chance to spend time with my cousins and their beautiful children nowadays. The chance at sweater weather makes it all the sweeter.

The past few years have been the beginning of new traditions, though; traditions that are bound to change as the shape of our family eventually changes. We’ve paved a backwards checkmark across the US for the past few years, visiting West Palm Beach, then Pueblo, then West Palm again before driving home New Years day. This year, the plan was no different. But the story always changes, even when the plan is the same. Doesn’t it seem that way?

Christmas in West Palm was warm and familiar. We shared a smoked turkey and cranberry sauce, stuffing and Papa’s famous mashed potatoes. I received more than I could have wished for; an All-Clad pasta pot, The Fat Duck Cookbook, and a pair of TOMS shoes, to name a few.

By the time we made it to Pueblo, we had probably eaten enough calories to last us ’till New Years, but we didn’t let that stop us. We turned a vegetarian Shepherd’s Pie into a more standard Shepherd’s Pie using the beef raised on a family farm in Oklahoma. We followed that with a few helpings of Vance’s grandmother’s potato-free gnocchi and at least two bean burritos bathed in organic green chili. We learned about baking at altitude, putting the *expletives* back in Cranberry Cake. By the time a week had past, I was so glad to have come and refreshed my sensory memory with the flavors of Colorado, but ready to be back at home as well, curled up with Chester and a glass of wine.

New Years Eve is always an interesting time to fly; people crowd the bars to get a peek at all of the college bowl games that are going on, flights are more scarce but fully-packed, and everyone just wants to be home before the clock rings 12. We boarded a tiny jet from Denver to Memphis, four seats across, and I held out hope that we’d be “bumped” off our second flight and score a free stay in Tennessee with a free plane ticket for later. About the last hour of our flight, the pilot came over the loudspeaker and informed us that there were severe thunderstorms in the area — we’d be flying through Arkansas and coming up from the south to land in Memphis. And we’d be landing about an hour late, as oh-by-the-way we’ve been stalling for a while.

Outside the gate, waiting to hear from Delta what the status of our flight home was.

At that point we were close to missing our connection to Ft. Lauderdale, but seeing how the plane was shaking us through the thunder like a bartender mixing cocktails at a bachelorette party, I didn’t much care about that detail. By the time we neared Memphis and I could make out the model names of the cars on the highway, the lightning was becoming more frequent. I felt like the plane was surrounded by so many angel paparazzi, snapping pictures of the middle aged men sleeping through this nightmare with their mouths agape.

My cousin Jenni was nice enough to come to our rescue when our connection was rescheduled for some unknown future hour (not what I meant by getting bumped, by the way!), and we spent the evening polishing off a bottle of wine and munching on the nuts and snacks my aunt and uncle had left out on their counter. After an hour or two, my aunt and uncle were home and we stayed up sharing stories until the wee hours. Even though we didn’t have clean clothes or our toiletries, it was a thousand times better than taking off for Fort Lauderdale in a thunderstorm, ringing in the new year at 5,000 feet.

I had to include a photo of the recipe, didn't I?

When we returned to Winter Park and the daily grind two days later, the first thing I set my mind to was a recipe for a grain salad with a hint of winter comfort and a helping of nutrition. It’s healthy yet satisfying, and a great way to keep your New Years resolution at least one more day.

The caramel stuck to the pan in only one place, which produced this lovely work of art.

One of the things I’m beginning to love about the holidays is the freedom to unapologetically retreat for hours at a time to the kitchen. Today I’m preparing a rich vegetable stock with roasted vegetables and dry red wine. Tomorrow I’ll use that stock for a hearty vegetarian shepherd’s pie to take to a friend’s house for dinner. Yesterday, though… Yesterday was a great day for caramels. Cold, rainy, and cloudy — really, what else is there do on a day like that? Cue favorite Good Will Hunting quote:

Maybe we could go somewhere and just eat a bunch of caramels.

I’ve made caramel before, but never with any success. It has always been a miserable fruitless endeavor that ended in a sticky mess of liquid brown stuff. Sure, it tasted alright, but it didn’t look like the pictures! (And that matters, okay?)

Continued after the jump. »