There’s a market not too far from me that carries banh mi sandwiches. It used to be just Tuesdays and maybe one other day, but they’re stocked every time I’m there, which isn’t always a Tuesday.

They’re not the finest banh mi – that would require real roast pork slices, and a long time ago, the market sold those very sandwiches, with rich, red, crusty slices of roast pork, ruffles of cilantro, incendiary slices of small Vietnamese peppers, thick, high-quality mayo, tomato slices, cucumber and carrot shreds. Instead, this banh mi uses some kind of ham-like matter and what I call Vietnamese bologna. A sliced-from-a-roll,  smooth textured lunch meat that I’ve seen for sale only once, understandably.

It’s worth speculating on how many aspects of a sandwich you can degrade and still maintain the sandwich’s desirability. This one still makes the cut, but barely.

The sandwich price seems to change occasionally, or for me anyway. That’s the MO of the market. On three visits, the item I’m holding is somehow, so-mysteriously mismarked with a price that’s to low by up to 50 cents.  “That price mark wrong,” the owner will say. And a higher price is mentioned. Once I naively paid it. Another time I paid it, knowing I was being overcharged, but the item (white peppercorns? coconut milk?) still cost much less than in a conventional grocery. And once I put the item back on the shelf.

It’s not against the law, what the store is doing. Chicanery, yes. Illegal, no. There’s a long, fine tradition of special Anglo pricing. Now that I’ve figured out what’s going on, I confirm the price of everything before I get to the register. Or I am prepared to put it back  on the shelf.

Why do I go there? Because it feels so good when I leave.

I could eat salad every day. Something about the combination of different textures and flavors, all dressed with a good, homemade dressing just grabs my palate.

But you can fall into a rut, and we do. It’s so easy to use tender green leaf lettuce and cut up an apple and crumble some blue cheese and throw on toasted almonds. Not that it isn’t good because it is, especially when there’s a tiny touch of Dijon mustard int he dressing, and maybe we pick up a fennel and slice a little of that in there, you know, if we’re feeling flush.

Sometimes I have to break out of the box and make myself go find another salad. Explore new green avenues. The spinach salad in the prevoius posting, for instance. And this little paradigm-shifting fried cheese salad.

We ate a lot of halloumi cheese in England. Vegetarians like it because you can grill and fry it, and there are a lot of vegetarians in England. The low milk fat, high protein profile causes haloumi to cook rather than melt. Fry it like a patty, serve it on a bun. Stuff it into portobellos. Top a salad with it. We were so sorry that we couldn’t  find it here. Big Fella was told that’s because one company controlled the distribution for this part of the country and they preferred to sell halloumi in industrial amounts rather than consumer-size packages.

Lately, we’ve been spotting it in a Middle Eastern market on Nolensville Road. Two very similar recipes on recipezaar.com pointed in the same general direction: a warm caper vinaigrette. The recipe is from Delia Smith, who is sort of the Julia Child of England. Or maybe more the Marian Cunningham. Solid, dependable, unflashy but innovative. I like that in a recipe as much as in a person.

Fried Halloumi with Caper Vinaigrette Over Salad

Zest and juice of 1 lemon
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1 tabelspoon balsamic vinegar
1 to 2 teaspoons capers
1 garlic cloves, minced
1 shallot, minced
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

1 block halloumi (it’s usually around 8 to 10 ounces)
Flour seasoned with salt and pepper
Oil for frying (just a little)

Whisk or shake the dressing ingredients to blend. Pat the cheese dry and slice into 8 slices. Coat the slices with a little flour and fry in just little oil until golden. Layer over salad greens and dress with the vinaigrette. Makes 2 main dish or 4 side salads.

   These last 10 years, I’m tasting a lot of flavors in foods that weren’t there before.  I taste almond flavoring in some French vanilla coffee creamers. I taste caramel flavoring in cheap bourbons. Just minuscule amounts, you know, too little to be listed in the ingredients.

And I can taste — even smell — chicken broth in Uncle Ben’s rice once it has cooked. Am I crazy — don’t answer that. Is it just me, or can other people taste the faintest hint of chicken broth in Uncle Ben’s freakishly white, fluff, regular grains?

A friend gave us venison back strap — a generous gift, as you already know if you’re a hunter.I settled on a vinegar-soy-sesame oil marinade, then a wrap of bacon and a drizzle of blueberry pomegranate syrup and a turn under the flames.

Big Fella saw me deeply involved with the vegetable side dishes and asked what he could do. He doesn’t cook, per se,  except for the odd skillet-browned bratwurst and soysage scramble, because he doesn’t have to.

Also, he’s a perfectionist who finds the most difficult possible way to do everything. It always turns out a superior result, but it’s maddeningly slow. Example: when it’s his turn to top the pizza, he chops each topping into microscopically small bits, thenspreads them with precision over the pizza. It takes ages.

But honestly, dinner needed attention. “You could wrap the venison pieces in bacon,” I offered. “But here’s the thing: the bacon will melt, and the fat will spread over the meat naturally, so don’t spend a lot of time trying to cover every millimeter of the meat with bacon.” Because wthout directions, he’d spend 30 minutes and  use a whole pound of the better-than-usual bacon we bought.

When I cook Chinese, I use a mise en place system because you’d be crazy not to, and end up with cruddy results.

For other cuisines, my aprons and dishtowels tell the story. I stop often to wipe my hands clean so I can prep the next step, because I didn’t set it out before I started.

When I checked in on Big Fella’s progress, I just had to shoot a photo. This perfect mise was the handiwork of my husband, whose car is a rolling trash can and whose office has corners piled so high with crap that we’ll have to hire a professional. I can’t explain it, so I had to document it.

Little Monty Python joke there.

I really like rabbit, which tastes a lot like chicken. And you might ask “Why cook rabbit, then?” And you’d have a point.

True, it comes cut up like chicken, into a white saddle and dark thigh quarters, very chicken-like. Also true that, chicken-like, there’s a mixture of white and dark meat. However the white meat is more like dark meat because it isn’t dry and chewy like chicken breast. It’s also more flavorful than a 6-week-old chicken. And there’s something slightly less factory-like about farmed rabbit than farmed chicken.

So this is a rabbit, here, cooked to an exquisite perfection in szguazet, a herbed reduction of tomatoes and wine, along the lines of cacciatore. Perfumey, wine-y, falling-off-the-bone tender. Served over pasta, with lots of the pan juices.

That’s a copy of Cucina di Lidia in the background, a wonderful cookbook of dishes from Lidia’s native Istria, which is Slovenia now, not Italy. Great place, Slovenia. Nice people, great food, awesome real estate. The spirit of Italy at half the price.

What makes the book distinctive is the simple, homey food. The ingredient lists are short, and there’s nothing exotic there, so everything should be perfectly fresh. The seafood chapter features the freshest catch, simply prepared. There’s a chapter on game, another on risotto and gnocchi and a butter/egg/milk pasta I’ve never heard of (bigoli) and rougher fare like white bean cake and plum gnocchi that seem really connected to the land and seasons. For sure I’m making one of the sausages from the book, either Mantuan sausage or cotechino (but I may have difficulty finding the “two pounds of face and butt fat” that it calls for).

Someone in our house would never, ever eat a fluffy bunny. So this coniglio magically transformed into the lowly chicken, no one was the wiser and everyone left the table well fed.

Coniglio (or Pollo) in Szguazet
1/4 cup olive oil
1 large onion, sliced
2 slices bacon, diced
3 bay leaves
4 sage leaves
1 teaspoon fresh or dried rosemary
4 whole cloves
1 (2 1/2- to 3-pound) rabbit, cut up
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
1 1/2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 cup dry white wine
2 cups chicken broth
Heat the olive oil in a dutch oven or coated casserole dish. Saute the onion, bacon, bay leaves, sage, rosemary and cloves until the onion is tender. Season the rabbit and add it to the pan. Brown it for 3 minutes on each side. Add the tomato paste and mix to coat the meat. Add the wine and scrape the bottom of the pan to loose the brown bits. Add the stock and simmer, half-covered, until he sauce is reduced and the rabbit is cooked through, about 30 minutes.
(Or use a pressure cooker and cook the rabbit 12 minutes. Release the pressure by running the cooker under water, remove the lid, and boil to reduce the sauce somewhat.)
Strain the sauce (or at least remove the cloves and bay leaves). Serve the rabbit and sauce over pappardelle or gnocchi. Makes 4 servings.

In trying to eat a more sustainable diet, I’m trying to eat more fish from lower on the fish chain. Sardines and mackerel instead of tuna and cod. Skate wing is pretty sustainable — it’s easy to catch, and best processed by the person fishing for it, and right away. It’s a little unusual in stores because most boats aren’t looking for skate. Since it’s usually a by-catch, the boat isn’t always prepared to do the quick processing that skate needs to prevent the neurotoxin in the skin from seeping into the flesh.

That’s too much information, really, but the point is that it’s a little unusual to find it in a store, which is too bad, because it’s so very tasty that unscrupulous fishmongers stamp out round portions of skate wing to sell as scallops.

I made great skate in England. The fish van came around on Wednesdays to the Portland Arms pub, the back loaded with good fresh seafood from 60 miles away in Lowestoft. Most weeks I picked up something I’d never tried before, then looked through cookbooks and recipe websites to find out how to cook it. Skate is usually always served with black butter in England, which is a typically terrible English name for a vinegary garlic butter reduced to a syrup. For the finale, a spoonful of capers. It’s a mixture that can make anything taste good. I remember thinking “Skate, I’ll do you again.”

But I didn’t find it again until a couple of weeks ago, in K&S market, frozen. You can buy skate fillets, but according to Beyond Salmon, it stays moister when cooked “on the bone,” which this skate was. (It isn’t really a bone, it’s a cartilege secton that separates the upper and lower fillet. ) The second secret of skate is that it’s covered with silvery connective tissue, which should ideally be pared off. It’s a bit of a chore — but kind of exciting, because it meant the lonely fish knife, which usually sits in the block with the other misfit rarely used knives, took a leading role in dinner.

The third secret of skate is that it should be cooked a little longer than other fish (according to Beyond Salmon) until the edges are crisp. So I made the black butter, dipped the skate into it, and broiled it for longer than you’d think, maybe 4 minutes on each side. Then I turned off the oven but left the skate in the oven another two minutes.

It turned out crisp at the edges, moist everywhere else, and tender enough to pull off the cartilege in shreds. Just as good as the first time. That’s why I love blogs so much — I would never have remembered what to do with it. Hey skate, I’ll do you again.

Skate in Caper Black Butter

1 skate wing, preferably “on the bone”

4 tablespoons butter

2 tablespoons olive oil

3 garlic cloves, minced

3 tablespoons good vinegar

2 tablespoons capers

How many times have you read that? Even people who hate fruitcake love this one. Even people who hate mushrooms love this soup.

What is it about food-hating that instantly makes people want to convert the hater? Tell someone you loathe peas/liver/brussels sprouts and suddenly she’s at your elbow waving a recipe and crooning, “Even my kids, who won’t eat anything, love these.” Whatever it is you dislike, it’s probably happened to you. I know I’ve done it myself.

Why do they do it? People are just nice, I guess, and they want everyone to enjoy a food as much as they do. Sometimes it’s just not going to happen. But occasionally, with a really good recipe, it’s possible to convert someone.

Case in point: there’s a tofu-hater at my table occasionally. I made an Indonesian Tofu Omelet the other day in which it was impossible to detect the tofu. IM.POSSIBLE. I wouldn’t have believed it myself if I hadn’t made it and tasted it. Tofu Hatah was visiting, and there was not much else to eat. (Except kale.) So while I don’t like to lie to people about what’s in the food, (because what if they’re allergic?) I called it an Indonesian omelet. It tastes a lot like Vietnamese banh xeo, which is just about my favorite Vietnamese food, which is just about my favorite cuisine. It went down the hatch without a hitch.

Do I feel a little guilty? Maybe so, but if you don’t actually tell the person, they don’t lose face, do they? Because that would just be rude. Way ruder than feeding someone a food they claim to hate.

Indonesian Tofu Omelet

This recipe is from The Southeast Asia Cookbook.

Drop the bean sprouts into boiling water for about 30 seconds. Refresh under cold water.

Drain and mash the tofu. Beat the tofu with the eggs and salt. Stir in the sprouts. Oil an 8-inch skillet or crepe pan. Add half of the mixture. Cover and cook until set. Flip it over and cook the other side (or broil it) until cooked through. Repeat with the remaining tofu mixture.

Combine the kecap manis and vinegar. Drizzle over each omelet. Scatter the chiles, peanuts and parsley over each. Cut into quarters. Makes 2 main dish servings; up to 6 appetizer servings.�

In search of innovative uses for the fourth weekly box of farm-raised organic greens, I pulled out one of my favorite cookbooks. Raghavan Iyer’s Turmeric Trail is a vivid picture of a working class Indian childhood, and the foods in the book are not like those in other Indian cookbooks. These are not the cream-enriched soups of the Raj or the rich lamb curries of your local restaurant. Instead, the book is about a spare but abundant childhood of his mother’s and grandmother’s frugal cooking: spiced onions made to stuff into a dimple of a rice ball, buttermilk curry, and potatoes in spices with just a tablespoon of split dried lentils for protein. There are meat and fish recipes in the book, but meat has never passed the man’s lips.

I know this because Iyer doesn’t live in a small house in India anymore — he’s in Minneapolis now, living downtown next door to my friend Melissa. They’re urban pioneers in tall, ancient houses in the shadow of the skyscrapers. The book is his attempt to describe his childhood in recipes.

Spiced Kale in Coconut Milk is along the lines of saag, while Chick Pea Flour Crepes (glycemic load: 27) are our latest discovery in the quest for a lower carb way to eat. The two make a fine, meatless meal that we look forward to having again. It almost, almost made us wish that greens season weren’t coming to an end.

Here’s the chickpea flour batter just before cooking. I must have accidentally pressed the Do Not Press button because the camera pouted and sulked and refused to take a picture of the finished meal. It looked pretty much like any mess o greens with corncakes, but it tasted way better.

Chick-Pea Flour Crepes
From The Turmeric Trail by Raghavan Iyer.

• 1 cup chick-pea flour (labeled gram or besan flour and found in Indian markets)
• 1/4 cup rice flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon turmeric
• 1 cup water
• 1 teaspoon sambhar masal, optional
• Vegetable oil for the skillet

Combine the flours, salt, turmeric and water in a bowl. Beat until smooth. Let stand 15 minutes. Coat a crepe pan of 8-inch skillet with vegetable oil. Pour in 1/4 cup batter and quickly tilt the pan to spread the batter. Cook for 2 minutes until the top loses its gloss. Turn and cook the other side. Keep crepes warm in aluminum foil. They can be reheated without toughening. Makes 6 crepes.

Sambhar Masala
This mixture is hot, hot, hot with a deep, toasty flavor. It keeps in the freezer for 2 years — that’s how long mine has been there, and it still tastes great. I adapted it slightly from Raghavan Iyer’s version.

• 1/2 cup dried red Thai, serrano or cayenne chiles
• 3 tablespoons chana dal (yellow split peas) or urad dal (split black lentils)
• 1 teaspoon coriander seed
• 1 teaspoon fenugreek seed
• 1 teaspoon black peppercorns
• 1 teaspoon vegetable oil
• 1/2 teaspoon turmeric

Combine all of the ingredients except in a bowl and mix well to coat with the oil. Heat a small skillet over medium-high heat and add the spice mixture. Toasts, shaking the pan and stirring, for 3 to 4 minutes until the chiles blacken and the lentils are golden brown. Transfer to bowl or plate and let cool. Grind until the mixture has a texture like finely ground pepper. Keep in an airtight jar at room temperature for 2 months. or in the freezer up to 2 years.

Stewed Greens with Coconut Milk
Mustard seeds popped in oil taste and smell just like popcorn, and just a spoonful of them is enough to flavor a whole pot of greens. If you use spinach, just cook it from its raw state. If you choose a sturdier green like collards or kale, cook them to tenderness first. (15 minutes in pressure cooker)
10 ounces fresh spinach, or cooked kale or collards
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 teaspoon black mustard seeds
1 teaspoon sambhar masala
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup unsweetened coconut milk
1/2 cup water
Cook the greens first if using kale or collards. Heat the oil over medium-high heat in a medium saucepan. Add the mustard seeds and cover the pan. Pop them until the popping stops. Add the spinach a handful at a time and cook just until wilted (or add the cooked kale and collards all at once. Add the remaining ingredients cook, uncovered and stirring, for 3 to 4 minutes to blend the flavors. Makes a main dish for 2 or side dish for 4.

We share two shares of organically grown, local produce with two other micro-families, and the spring time boxes arrive like wave after wave of green leafy things, as anyone with a CSA share can attest. The greens barely fit in the boxes. The bottom half of the refrigerator is bulging with leafy bunches.

It’s great in theory, but in practice, it means cooking a large batch of something green three nights in a week. I dream in green. I think green thoughts. I have to push aside green food to find the milk. Surfers use the term “the green room” to describe how it feels inside the barrel of a wave. It’s a little like that.

Kale is the biggest issue. I think kale is wonderful, but Sweet Cheeks and Big Fella are indifferent at best, and hostile at worst. And all the kale recipes fall into two types: kale and chickpea gratin/soup and kale cooked like collards.

Found a new one on Recipezaar, though: Czech kale patties

Cook the kale then drain it really well and pat it dry. Puree the kale with an egg, an onion and bread crumbs, then roll in more breadcrumbs, flatten into a patty, and fry. It tastes like spinach. I still needed insurance that they would eat it, so I added a homemade cheese sauce. Two out of three residents of my house found it acceptable.

To stay on top of the green wave, it’s likely that one of the meals will have to include two green vegetable-based dishes. Our plates tonight included Fried Fennel Slices from Deborah Madison’s brilliant vegetarian book The Savory Way.

After the meal, one of the vegetable bins was partially emptied out, and it felt like real progress.

But it’s just a temporary victory. There’s another delivery tomorrow.

Fried Fennel Slices
2 large or 3 small fennel bulbs

1 egg, beaten
1 cup bread crumbs
1 heaping tablespoon chopped fennel greens
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
Clarified butter or light olive oil for frying
Pry off the scarred, thick outer layers of the fennel and use it for soup or shave it for salad. Cut the bulb lengthwise into pieces about 1/2-inch thick, leaving the core attached.
Dip the slices into beaten eggs, then coat with crumbs seasoned with salt and pepper. Fry in butter in a large, heavy skillet over very low heat, turning once. The fennel should be tender at about the same time the crumbs turn dark brown. Serve with a lemon wedge, or a spoonful of homemade mayonnaise flavored with a few drops of Pernod. Makes 4 servings.

I don’t know why I buy bananas. For their flavor, I can take them or leave them. They have their good points (potassium) and their drawbacks (loads of carbs) (that mooshy texture once they pass the perfectly ripe point). But I buy them occasionally nonetheless, because that’s what good American moms do! Like I buy Emmentaler cheese, even though it smells like feet, because it’s authentic.

They sit in the bowl until, as you see, big sugar spots develop. Then more sugar spots. At that point, no one can be convinced to eat them fresh. I can’t stand to see the bananas go to waste, so I throw them in the freezer, which turns the skin black. So when I have a party, I have to remember, Remove the frozen black bananas from the freezer because they frighten civilians.

They kind of frighten me, too, when I find them months later, lurking under three 1-cup containers of frozen chicken broth. Ugly and scary. I thaw them, shaking my head that something so vile can ever be put to use, and make banana bread. My daughter eats two slices, and I eat the rest of the loaf.

Malaysian baked bananas prevents that last step toward the freezer. You can use really really ripe bananas to make it, because they’re baking to a soft texture anyway, and the overly sweet taste is covered with butter, brown sugar, lime juice, cloves and ginger – the topping and the baking transform a banana into a side dish,  or a dessert, or an ice cream topping.

No more creepy blackened banana bodies.
 

Malaysian Baked Bananas
The recipe is from The Southeast Asia Cookbook

4 tablespoons butter
1/3 cup packed light brown sugar
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1 1/2 tablespoons orange or pineapple juice
1 1/2 tablespoons lime juice
1 teaspoon minced, peeled fresh ginger
6 small firm bananas, skin on, cut into halves lengthwise
Beat the butter and sugar in a bowl until soft and well combined. Beat in cloves, orange juice, lime juice and ginger. Arrange the bananas on a rimmed, greased baking dish. Spread seasoned butter mixture over them. Bake at 375 degrees for 10 to 15 minutes until top is bubbling and bananas are tender.
The dish may be prepared to the baking stage up to several hours ahead and covered. No refrigeration necessary. Bake just before serving. Makes 6 servings.