recipe: a side fit for thanksgiving

my copy of Miss Dahl’s Voluptuous Delights has rested on the shelf for a good long while. i have eyed (and coveted) the prose and photography that grace its pages. marked recipes with bits of paper, as i’m known to do. then, distraction pounces away my attentions. magazines soon lounge atop the cookbook in a literary mash upon our coffee table. a few hard-bodied kai reads join in on the fun. before i know it, i’m reaching for its safe return to my grasp during a cleaning frenzy, and back to square one i am. until now.

finally, in the name of this week’s holiday, thanksgiving, i bring to you the first recipe i tried: buckwheat risotto with wild mushrooms. i admit that i also made the onion soup at the same time, but this risotto is oh so very appropriate for a thanksgiving side (a breeze to make) — especially if, like me, you are a new mum, and spare time has taken on a whole new meaning (slim pickings).

this risotto will serve the perfect side to bring to a gathering or something to spruce up the usual pickings at your own. better yet, maybe just make it for the good fun of having a tasty nibbler to pick from throughout this week while planning the other menu or afterwards when craving an easy and lighter nosh.

not much is required of you. grab a mess of scraggly or meaty or feather light mushrooms. give them a thorough heating in a pan slick with olive oil, wine, and shallot flecks. cook the buckwheat groats (or isreali couscous as I did since i couldn’t find buckwheat around these parts). turn in a generous spoonful of marscapone cheese to creamily sweeten the deal. then topple the ‘shrooms upon the couscous pearls across a favorite platter. that’s that, my friends.

i’m grateful for so much this year, and i wish you and yours much fun and happiness around whatever table you gather. cheers.

recipe: adapted from sophie dahl’s buckwheat risotto with wild mushrooms

2 cups isreali couscous
salt and pepper
2 cups wild mushrooms, washed and sliced
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons olive oil
4 shallots, chopped
1 clove of garlic, peeled and crushed
2 tablespoons dry white wine
1/2 cup marscapone cheese 

cook the couscous according to the package instructions. once cooked, set aside.

over a medium heat, warm one tablespoon of butter and one tablespoon of olive oil in a deep saute pan. once the butter is melted, reduce the heat to low and add the shallots and garlic. cook until the shallots are semi-translucent, about five minutes. topple the mushrooms into the pan and stir in the salt and pepper to your liking. pour in half of the wine, cover the pan, and cook for an additional four minutes. with a slotted spoon, scoop the lot into a warm dish, reserving the pan juices.

to the reserved pan juices, add the couscous, the butter and olive oil that remain as well as the marscapone cheese. stir in the wine and cook for a few more minutes over a low heat. 

serve as pictured above.

food photography: sunday sessions

prop inspiration provided by the lovely michelle.

food memoir: "my berlin kitchen"

even though we are nearing the first anniversary of our move, there still is quite a bit of adjustment to overcome. you may wonder how that’s possible given all of the months between then and now. how is it that my office is still in shambles or that our dining room table plays host to more bags than meals or that our guestroom is the only room that feels settled. i reckon the pause began when he opened a restaurant months after kai arrived, all the while still playing host to our current jobs that reside two hours away. oh, and then there’s this place too…

all of these distractions aside, what really bothers me is not feeling familiar with my kitchen. of late, all i’ve reached for are baby bottles, piper’s jar of peanut butter, and frozen kashi meals. feeling that i have much work to do on this house before it truly feels our home is one thing. nils may share the blame with me on that front. feeling a stranger in my own kitchen is quite another. that’s fully my fault. i’ve been skirting the issue for months — instead, retreating beneath the haze of my newfound life as a mum and all its distraction in caring.

now, as kai begins to settle into a routine that includes regular and lengthy naps(!), i am feeling the pull back to those worn utensils and scrappy pots and heaving dutch oven and cast iron skillet. i am also wanting to be here more, talking food and drink with you. writing. photographing. all of these interests are such a huge part of who i am and i shed them for awhile when this love took hold. now that i’m regaining clarity of mind, it somehow seems feasible to be in both places. and, i think it all begins in the kitchen, and with this book. 

i couldn’t help but feel a serendipitous nudge towards resuming my interests in food writing and photography while reading luisa weiss’s my berlin kitchen. weiss turned her whole life around to set at ease the voices of her deepest self when all simply didn’t feel right. what kind of mum would i be for kai if i didn’t listen to my own internal nag. it was kind enough to give me leave when i needed to be solely with him. now that’s he is taking his own charge — becoming this amazing lil man of ours — she’s returned with tugs towards the kitchen.

since i started reading my berlin kitchen, i’ve had reason enough to ponder which recipes i should return to not only the kitchen, but to you. what would entice me back? after a few chapters read in seemingly stolen moments throughout the days and evenings when kai was sleeping or being watched by his papa or grand mums, i knew i’d be hard-pressed to choose just one recipe.

you see, weiss plucks recipes from a life steeped in a variety of cultures. i imagined beef ragu or braised endives with omelette confiture or an apple tart as a harbinger of autumn. as the pages turned began to outweigh those left to explore, i started to grow anxious. too many recipes were dog-eared. i’d spent so much time not cooking that i was overly eager to return and cook it all!

i do, as my mum does, and tuck keepsakes between the pages of cookbooks. birthday cards. poems. photos. snippets of life that i hold dear and want to return to while in the kitchen. weiss’s book reminds me of this practice. the clarity of her memories reads like snapshots frozen in their primary focus and tucked away between meaningful recipes of recollection and comfort. although i’m sure it served a good summer read, i’d rather read it as the weather here prompts more time to be spent indoors resting upon the couch with feet propped on a partner’s lap or tucked beneath oneself. this is a focused and finely tuned read that shuttled me to her vivid scenes and left me looking forward to the next moment i’d be able to spend traveling through her words — seeing these places i have yet to visit, reflected in her memories.

so, i’ve returned to the kitchen with her book in hand. it’s been a clumsy start. a near miss finger slice. tools out of place. an electric oven instead of the familiar gas stoves of every city dwelling of my past. a kai crawling around the tiles and playing with a potholder or vacant tupperware tub. a piper shoulder-to-thigh with me, unfamiliar with my stance in the kitchen not leading to her mealtime. cooking not immediately following preparation, instead being postponed til the next morning, because kai’s eyes rim with blushing tiredness. then a morning spent hurriedly cooking before work fueled by strong coffee and a new mum’s adrenaline reserve, and loving every moment and aroma.

i’m back.

—

the two recipes i chose for this post are braised leeks and swiss chard and gruyere panade. after tasting, i thought immediately of thanksgiving. the panade is like a more refined stuffing with better flavor definition. salty and almost meaty. when i make it again for thanksgiving i will add a layer of butternut squash (as luisa mentions she’d like to) most definitely roasted. the leeks are silky and earthy. after braising them early in the morning in my new-ish kitchen, i must agree with luisa when she writes, “there’s nothing like a panful of golden, tender braised leeks to make a house smell like home.”

find these recipes on the wednesday chef:

braised leeks

swiss chard and gruyere panade