Farro and winter squash salad with pepitas

This morning, for the first time in forever, I cooked something for myself for lunch--something healthy. I figured it'll magically offset all the candy I ate last night, feeling an obligation to make a dent in the overstock we were left with. It's our first year in a house (no one ever went trick-or-treating in the apartments), I was excited, and I didn't know how much to buy. On top of that, apparently ours is the kind of neighborhood where everyone has kids, puts up adorable Halloween decorations, and then takes the kids to another neighborhood to trick-or-treat. Cute. Thankfully we had a few small groups, including one with a boy who was actually excited to see "Stawbuhst!"  Knock yourself out, kid, there's a reason I put that one out for the first round...

Some time ago I had to swear off subscribing to food blogs as prolific and consistently tantalizing as Smitten Kitchen, finding myself even less capable than usual of making semi-frugal meal plans and then not changing my mind a thousand times... It was an unhealthy and inefficient pattern. So I wouldn't even call myself a regular reader of Smitten Kitchen, though I love her writing and her food and the cookbook is most definitely on my wishlist. Something about that blog transforms me from all-out recipe slave (thanks, Cook's Illustrated) to semi-imaginative, measurement-despising pseudo-chef. Probably it's a mix of the encouraging, amicable tone and the artsy small print (not to mention the photos!), but whatever it is, something akin to creativity is its invariable effect on me. So in that spirit I altered this recipe to use the delicata squash I picked up on a whim last week. I had never tried it but I've never met a winter squash I didn't love roasted, and this one proved no different. It's like candy, people. Healthy candy. What more can you ask for from a vegetable? The pairing with farro and pumpkin seeds is nothing short of inspired, so I didn't feel the need to mess with success. I did try adding rinsed canned black beans to mine for some protein and it worked quite well.

And as for the cheese---I might as well throw a real quick pity party and say that I've been reluctantly dairy-free for about two weeks, trying to solve some reflux issues with la bebita, and I think it's definitely helping her (mixed feelings---just kidding! Totally kidding.). I say this as a strong believer in the placebo effect, so I went into it quite suspiciously. I haven't been doing a total elimination diet; I just cut my inordinate dairy consumption by about 98%, I would say. So I guess the way to test this scientifically is to go another week as I have been, and then reintroduce one food at a time to look for a reaction... Seems kind of cruel when your test subject is a baby, but we're not suspecting a serious allergy here, just sensitivity. All that to say, I vacillated on whether to put a teeny tiny bit of feta in this salad (one of several opened cheeses languishing in my fridge...tragic). But guess what? It didn't need the cheese. I know, such a hypocrite---I just swore I would never trust a person who called the presence of any cheese in any dish "unnecessary." But all the other components of the salad are just that good--- and perhaps I am starting to reconcile myself to this dairy-free thing. Pity party over, though. Make this salad. With all the modifications your heart desires, because you were born to cook and know exactly what you're doing, you brilliant chef you. /unsuccessfully channeling Deb

(Oh hey, I remembered to take a photo. Bet you wish I hadn't. I should learn how to use a camera someday. Here it is sans the last-minute addition of black beans.) 

Farro and winter squash salad with pepitas
adapted from Smitten Kitchen
Serves 2-3 as a main dish
Keeps a week

2 medium delicata squash, peeled (optional), halved lengthwise, seeded, and sliced into 1/2" half-moon pieces
4 Tbsp olive oil, divided
3/4 cup farro
1/2 red onion, minced
1 Tbsp. sherry vinegar
1 Tbsp. water
1/2 tsp. sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
1/3 c. toasted pepitas, preferably salted
Feta cheese to taste (optional)
1 (15 oz) can black beans, rinsed and drained (optional)

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Roast the squash pieces in a single layer on a baking sheet with 2 Tbsp of the oil and salt to taste until tender, 20-25 mins, turning pieces over halfway through. Set aside.

2. Meanwhile, cook the farro according to package directions or, if you bought it in bulk like me and have no idea if it's pearled, semi-pearled, or what, try just dumping it in lots of boiling salted water for 25-30 minutes or so. You want it to be soft but still a bit chewy. Once done, drain and let cool slightly.

3. Also meanwhile, combine the onion, vinegar, water, sugar, and salt in a small bowl. Let marinate about 30 minutes while the other stuff cooks.

4. Combine all ingredients in a medium bowl and toss with the remaining 2-3 Tbsp. of olive oil. Add more salt and pepper if desired, then serve at room temperature or chilled.

Stuffed acorn squash with barley; skillet cherry cobbler

I made a couple of new recipes from my new but well-used Cooking for Two books last weekend that I want to review. First, from CF2 2011, the stuffed squash. Here is a vegetarian entree to try on the most protein-demanding male (or female) you cook for. I was enthralled with this recipe, enough to want to type it out (in my own words, of course) and post here. For one thing it has gotten me hooked on fennel, which I thought I did not like. These were very filling portion sizes to me, and there is enough texture variation between the barley, pine nuts, and fennel that it's not just a mushy blend of squash with cheese on top. I would call this a restaurant-quality meal. The next time we have temperatures, say, below 80, I am making it again. I don't know when that will be. :(

Stuffed Acorn Squash with Barley

Cooking for Two 2011

1 (1 1/2 lb) acorn squash, halved and seeded

2 Tbsp. olive oil

1/4 c. pearl barley (not hulled)

1/2 fennel bulb, trimmed of stalks, cored, and chopped fine

1 shallot, minced

3 garlic cloves, minced

1/2 tsp. ground coriander

1/4 tsp. minced fresh thyme 

1 1/2 oz (3/4 c.) grated Parmesan cheese (I used grana padano)

2 Tbsp. minced fresh parsley 

2 Tbsp. pine nuts, toasted and chopped

1 Tbsp. unsalted butter

Balsamic vinegar

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Line a rimmed baking sheet with foil and spray with Pam. Brush the cut sides of the squash with about 1 Tbsp of the oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and place cut side down on the baking sheet. Roast in lower-middle section of oven for 45-55 mins., or until a knife can slip into the flesh with no resistance. Remove from oven and increase oven temp to 450.

2. Meanwhile, bring 2 cups water to boil in a saucepan. Stir in the barley and 1/4 tsp. salt and cook over medium heat until the barley is just tender, about 20 minutes. Drain and set aside.

3. In the now-empty saucepan, heat the remaining Tbsp. olive oil over medium heat til shimmering. Stir in the fennel and shallot and cook about 5 minutes, til softened and lightly brown. Stir in the garlic, thyme, and coriander and cook just til fragrant. Off heat, stir in the barley, 1/2 c. of the Parmesan, parsley, pine nuts, and butter. Taste and season with more salt or pepper if needed.

4. Scoop out the roasted squash flesh, leaving 1/8" thickness in each shell so it can support the filling. Fold squash into the barley mixture, then mound the filing into the squash shells. Sprinkle with the remaining 1/4 c. Parmesan and bake on the upper-middle oven rack til cheese is melted, about 5-10 minutes. (You could probably also try the broiler for 5 mins, so you get some browning--I would do that next time.) Drizzle balsamic vinegar over each portion and serve.

For dessert that night I made the skillet cherry cobbler (CF2 2010) with David Lebovitz's Philly-style vanilla ice cream (still my favorite), and while it was good and typically ingenious in its technique (the number of interesting dishes that CI has you use ovenproof skillets for has me committed to buying only ovenproof skillets for the rest of my life), I'm not that motivated to type it out. It is a great use for those huge jars of Morello cherries in syrup that I always buy at Trader Joe's without having a specific purpose for them. This jar had been languishing in my pantry since last fall...

Black-eyed pea cakes: a belated review

A couple weeks ago I finally got around to making this delicious vegetarian take on black-eyed pea cakes from Restaurant Favorites at Home. This book is one installment in the Cook's Illustrated Best Recipe "series," if a line of cookbooks can be called such. Since I gather from fruitless Google searches that it is not widely reviewed online (probably because it was published in 2003, right around when blogs were gaining ground as a high school "fad," and further because it seems to have gone out of print since then), I want to try to review everything I make from it on this blog.

Since it was just two of us for lunch, I halved both components of this recipe (said to serve 6). I had tons of sauce leftover, and especially for lunch portions, 3 cakes each (which comes out to be the serving size) was a bit too much. I wouldn't call these dainty little things. Especially relevant for entertaining, you have the option of making the cakes ahead, up to the frying---ironically an overnight rest was deleted from the original restaurant recipe because of the challenges that planning ahead could pose for the home cook. I made the cakes the night before (which means you have to soak the black-eyed peas the night before that) and brought them most of the way to room temperature before frying, just to be safe. I wouldn't make the sauce ahead, as I thought the texture suffered quite a bit the next day(s). (Did I mention I had a lot left over?!)

My one major problem with the outcome was that while dipping them in the panko before frying, several of the cakes "crumbled" a bit, and a couple completely fell apart, making them un-fryable. But that was almost certainly due to the fact that I could not properly puree part of the beans (lacking a food processor), as the recipe tells you to do presumably to help them bind better. So I don't think that's a recipe problem: just be sure not to skip the puree.

Sauce in the making: looks like Christmas!

The sauce was very quick and easy, and pretty tasty. There's something so restaurant-esque to me about making a sauce that begins with a bunch of chopped stuff on the stovetop and ends in a smooth puree in the blender... Anyway, for me this sauce wouldn't be spicy unless you added a good deal more Tabasco. (I would want to try it now with the chipotle Tabasco I opened up the other night, which I found fairly addictive.)

The only pictures I took of the leftover cakes (which I put back in the fridge until frying the next day) were terribly out of focus and not worth posting. Overall I'd give this recipe a 6/10. Perfectly decent flavor, not too fussy, and a nice option for a Southern vegetarian (rare combination!) lunch or main course.