Brussels Sprouts

From AwfullyBigAdventures by Jessica Harrell

January 14, 2010

I kept noticing Brussels sprouts at the grocery store. They lingered there enticingly, but I had no idea how to cook them. I could hear my mother’s voice in the back of my head ticking off the list of vegetables or ways she refused to cook because it made the house smell bad. She doesn’t fry, she doesn’t cook her own turnip greens (even though she loves them as any good Southerner would), and she never, not once that I can remember, cooked Brussels sprouts. She also rarely cooked with garlic owing to her job as a dental hygienist and the fear of looking into people’s mouths all day only to realize later she’d been breathing garlic breath at them.

Now, I cook with garlic all the time and lots of it. And earlier this week I began adding Brussels sprouts to my vegetable checklist. My favorite weeknights meals (for I’m almost always only cooking for one) include pasta with veggies or a rice stir-fry. Adding the sprouts was an easy inclusion - I’m always looking for ways to mix it up, but the first time I cooked them was a bit of a lesson.

I read that I should roast them, so I put some mushrooms, carrots, onions and sprouts in a small dish with some olive oil and roasted them for half an hour in the oven. They turned out fine, but I wasn’t satisfied, so I kept looking and thinking. I ended up deciding to steam them, for only a minute or two and then add them at the last minute to my typical pasta dish.

This worked much better for my tastes and for my one-person pasta bowl.

Jessica’s One Person Vegetable Pasta:

Prepare one serving of pasta
Sweat onion and garlic in olive oil on low-medium
Add the harder vegetables (i.e. carrots broccoli) so they have a little more time to saute
Cook these until they are almost like you like them
Add softer vegetable choices like mushrooms or zucchini
Steam Brussels sprouts for only a minute or two
Meanwhile add spinach (I like to add spinach at the very end so that it just begins to wilt)
Add steamed sprouts
Add 2-3 tsp of basil (fresh or frozen) as well as a dash of balsamic vinegar
Add 1/2 cup of marinara or other red spaghetti sauce
Add pasta and toss in pan
Serve in a bowl and enjoy with a glass of red wine

A New Beginning

From AwfullyBigAdventures by Jessica Harrell

January 5, 2010

My roommate brought home a flyer for a CSA the other day, and I have to admit I felt a little bit of pride in the excitement I noticed on her face. We haven’t known each other all that long, but I was afraid I had been a little over-exuberant with my food philosophies when we were getting to know each other. She actually asked me if I was going to go to culinary school. (Maybe I shouldn’t talk so much about food and cooking and kitchen appliances all the time.) I don’t have a desire to be a chef, but maybe that is a bit surprising, even to me.

This all started when I spent a semester in Italy - or maybe before, with my Italian professor who kept talking about Slow Food. We, my classmates and I, were a little confused by all this Slow Food talk. I do remember attempting to explain the concept to someone later. All I knew to say was, “It’s like the opposite of Fast Food,” which I suppose is true, but not nearly the whole story.

So, then I lived in Italy for four months, then I read Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma and Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Now I live in Portland, OR, the home of what I’ve heard are some pretty great Farmer’s Markets - Oh Spring, come quickly! And now my roommate, after hearing me talk for months about eating local, fresh, in season food, is looking forward to joining a CSA with me for this coming harvest.

So I went out and bought Deborah Madison’s Local Flavors, and I’m looking for other advice about using all that produce - canning, making jams. I’m new to this part. I’ve moved so many times in the past two year, I haven’t had a chance to store up, but this year is going to be different. I can’t wait!

A Warm Cup of Soup

From AwfullyBigAdventures by Jessica Harrell

November 11, 2009

I’ve gone a little soup crazy these days. Fall seems to just ooze the craving for soup. The air is nippy, the rain drizzles down at some point every single day, and all I want to do is snuggle up by the fire and eat a bowl of warm delicious soup.

The longevity of my homemade soup is made possible by my favorite and only preservative, the freezer. So far I’ve made a black bean chili and a vegetable minestrone (minus the pasta because I hear it doesn’t freeze well, so it’s really more of a vegetable stew) that I’ve frozen in single serving containers and pulled out for the next couple weeks.

Tonight I made a roasted red pepper soup from “The Daily Soup,” an inspiring little cookbook I recently picked up used from Powell’s. I haven’t dared to freeze a soup with cream before, so we’ll see how this one thaws. Right now I still have it in the refrigerator, and it separated more than I expected, but you can’t find out until you try, right?

I find the task of making each batch both a challenge and a blessing, adding vegetables and spices, and leaving out the celery because I hate celery. No soup is as good as the one I make myself from scratch where the scents waft through the kitchen and through the house, and I know that all the work is completely worth it because I get to eat this all month.

Each creation is part of my winter ritual. Each serving is something prized for another day.Each bite is savory and delicious.

Fresh Summer Salsa

From AwfullyBigAdventures by Jessica Harrell

September 3, 2009

In the house where I grew up when I come home to visit, my parents and I congregate around the kitchen island and chat, catching up over the preparation of glorious home cooked meals and the eating of it that followed. When I was in college and would come home for part of the summer, my mom and I would often choose a few adventurous meals to cook together. My memories of these times are surrounded by the colors of the summer vegetables and the tastes of their Southern-style preparation.

One of our favorite summer food adventures involved exploring the downtown farmers’ market and collecting summer squash, pole beans, freshly shelled lima beans, cucumbers and tomatoes, and peaches for cobbler leaving my father searching aimlessly for the meat in our all-veggie meal. We didn’t travel to the market often though – it was at least half an hour away – so when we did go, we made the best of it. At that perfect time of year, mid-August, our favorite Tennessee tomatoes would come into full force. The bright red, plump fruits were our most prized selection.

During the season when the tomatoes were their reddest, we would buy a basketful, along with an onion or two, some tomatillos, jalapeños, garlic, and cilantro. We’d go home, after stopping at the grocery store for tortilla chips, and go to chopping tomato after tomato, taking care not to touch our eyes after touching a jalapeño, and plucking handfuls of fresh basil leaves from the herb garden. We had a recipe, but we used it as a more of a guideline, tasting often and adding carefully once the main ingredients had been mixed together.

When we were finished, we would have what looked like an entire summer’s harvest worth of salsa spilling over the edges of the largest bowl my mother owned. By the end of the week, the bowl would be scraped clean by chips, tacos, fajitas, and whatever other foods we could eat that week to best highlight our favorite summer salsa.

This summer, I have moved back into that house for a few more months before I leave my hometown to move across the country. I have sat at that same kitchen island talking to my mother about buying new tires for my worn out car and whether or not I should get a AAA membership in case I get stranded on the side of the road. As I plan, and she listens as she always does so well, we both know that when all the tomatoes have been picked from their vines and the pumpkins are making their way to the farmers’ market stands I’m going to pile as many books and rain jackets (and kitchen utensils) into my car and pull out of the driveway for the Northwest.

So, as I prepare for my getaway, my mom and I also make one last pilgrimage to fresh salsa heaven. On a Sunday afternoon, using produce I picked up at the Farmers’ Market on my way home from downtown, we set to chopping once more. As evening comes over the horizon we take our first bite, add a little more basil and jalapeno, give the salsa one more thorough stir and gaze upon our high summer delicacy filling the bowl.

We stand around the kitchen island dipping chip after chip and talking of the adventures that lay ahead. We cherish not only the flavor of the food but the familiarity of the hands that prepared it and the kitchen in which it was prepared. Something magical and peaceful occurs when we gather around the table for a meal. I tuck away these memories of salsa making with the other memories of cooking and eating with my family here, and I smile at the prospect sharing stories with them in this same place when I come home, once again, to visit.

Recipe (or guidelines) for Fresh Summer Salsa

5-6 tomatoes
1-2 onions
2 tomatillos
1 jalapeño (or more to taste, but watch out, they’re HOT)
3 cloves of garlic
1 handful of fresh cilantro
8-10 fresh basil leaves
¼ cup lemon or lime juice

Chop the first seven ingredients and mix together in a large bowl or put in the food processor. Squeeze a ¼ cup or more of lemon or lime juice to taste. Mix well and enjoy with tortilla chips or on tacos or nachos.