The boy loved the chocolate card his sister made him, and his shiny new red bike, but most of all he craves one thing and one thing only: LEGO.
I tell, you, the boy’s passion for the bricks surpasseth all else; the glory of a new kit transcends every earthly joy he has known thus far. In his fifth year, Finn has dedicated himself to the difficult discipline of interlocking geometry and re-made himself into something of patient zen master. His room has become a shrine, the place he repairs to for the “quiet” he craves in which to build, and when he emerges, sometimes 4 hours later, it is with crazed but beatific look of a saint: utterly otherworldly and fanatically contented.
And so, we had no choice but to make the boy a LEGO cake for the LEGO birthday party he had with another friend.
He emerged from his domain long enough to help make the cake with his sister, which we did in a floury mess two days before. We used the Devil Dog Cake from Smitten Kitchen, which is a moist, chocolate cake with marshmallow filling and which, like all the Smitten Kitchen cakes, was terrific.
And Kory worked his magic the night before the party.
He did have a few WWDD moments (What Would Duff Do?), as squares are remarkably less forgiving than volcano shapes, and a less-moist cake would also have helped, but the end result was, well, you can see for yourself:
It was, as you can imagine, a huge hit with the 5 & under set. And at pick-up, their parents didn’t mind a small slice either.
The only problem is that between this and the Volcano Cake, the bar has been set. There will be no rest for Kory until the kids can roll fondant on their own.
Like any family, we fall in to dinner ruts, when I feel like our meals fall into two categories: something with rice or something with pasta. This is exacerbated by the fact that I’m feeding two fairly picky eaters, and of course we are also limiting ourselves by choosing not to eat meat or fish. So it was a little thrill the other day when my mom sent me a recipe that looked like something the boys would eat. It does fall into the “something over pasta” category, and in fact uses ingredients we eat all the time, but combined in a new way and that, sometimes, just makes all the difference.
Of course, I couldn’t help tinkering with the recipe; I roasted the squash (because of course I already had the oven on to bake dessert), and we kept the sauce on the side because only one kid likes sauce, we used black sesame seeds because that’s what we had on hand, and at a certain point, fairly early in the process, Tony took over because, as I’ve said before, I really don’t make dinner (but sometimes I do delegate). Happily, it was a hit with the whole family, so thank you, Mom, and thank you, Martha Rose Shulman, for a great new entree to add to our winter dinner rotation.
Stir-Fried Winter Squash and Tofu With Soba
6 ounces tofu (we used a pound), sliced about 1/2 inch thick
2 tablespoons canola or peanut oil
1/2 red onion, sliced
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 teaspoons minced ginger
1 tablespoon sesame seeds
1 small butternut squash, diced (about 4 cups)
1 tablespoon sherry
1/4 cup water
Soy sauce to taste
1/2 pound buckwheat noodles (soba)
1 tablespoon dark Chinese sesame oil
1. Wrap the tofu in clean kitchen towels or paper towels, and place under a cutting board for 10 minutes. Cut in 1-inch wide dominoes.
2. Heat 1 tablespoon of the oil in a large nonstick skillet or wok, and stir-fry the tofu until lightly colored, about three minutes. Using tongs or a slotted spatula, remove from the pan and set aside on a plate. Add the onion to the pan, and stir-fry until it softens, about three minutes. Add the remaining tablespoon of oil and the squash. Cook, stirring often, for 10 minutes. Add the garlic, ginger and sesame seeds, and stir-fry for one minute, until fragrant. Return the tofu to the pan, stir in the sherry and 1/4 cup water, cover and reduce the heat to medium. Simmer five minutes or until the squash is tender. Uncover and add soy sauce to taste. Keep warm while you cook the soba.
3. Bring 3 or 4 quarts of water to a boil in a large pot. Add the noodles gradually, so that the water remains at a boil, and stir once with a long-handled spoon so that they don’t stick together. Wait for the water to come back up to a rolling boil — it will bubble up so don’t fill the pot all the way — and add 1 cup of cold water. Allow the water to come back to a rolling boil, and add another cup of cold water. Allow the water to come to a boil one more time, and add a third cup of water. When the water comes to a boil again, the noodles should be cooked through. Drain and toss with the sesame oil.
4. Arrange the noodles on a platter, top with the tofu and vegetables, and serve.
Yield: Serves four.
Advance preparation: You can stir-fry the tofu and vegetables several hours ahead and reheat when you cook the noodles. This is one stir-fry that even tastes good reheated the next day.
Over labor day weekend, I flew to Los Angeles to visit my friend, Melissa Clark, the novelist (not the food writer). You can read her book about a girl impregnated by a lazy sperm or catch up with her on her blog. Melissa is one of those friends you thank the world for every day. She has kept me sane over many years, and as her blog attests, she is apparently connected to everything in the best way. Every time I see her, no matter in what city or state, she’s always finding fun things to do, great places to eat, and amazing people to hang out with. She’s also the one who connected me to my husband. And on this, long-awaited, much-needed trip, she not only re-connected me to myself, but connected me to picadillo, a classic Cuban dish of highly spiced, savory-sweet ground beef, with which I fell immediately, irrevocably in love.
Now, this is a little strange, because Melissa is a vegetarian. But she lives on the beach, in Marina del Rey (please don’t stalk her) and we walked to Venice for breakfast at a Cuban inspired restaurant, where I had Huevos con Picadillo. Aside from the fact that we had a lingering, adult breakfast (imagine…), in the sun, on the Saturday of a long weekend, the picadillo was like nothing I had ever tasted before. It doesn’t look like much on the plate, but the flavors are rich and complex.
When I came home, I scoured the internet for recipes, emailed my friend Richard Fleming who wrote an amazing book about walking across Cuba. If anyone had an authentic picadillo recipe, it would be him. But alas, he did not (which is not, I promise you, a reason not to read his book, you should.)
Rich did write to me that regarding Cuban black beans, in the “Oriente, in the Santiago region, they are made “more flavorful” by the addition of a tablespoon or so of sugar near the end of cooking…” I used this bit of information to adapt one of the many recipes I found to come up with one that approximated what I had eaten in Los Angeles. Almost all recipes call for raisins, but my husband hates raisins, so to add some sweetness, I used ketchup. This also seemed in line with Rich’s advice to add sugar, and answered the complaint aimed at several recipes that called for the apparently inauthentic tomato paste.
The first night I served the picadillo, the kids stared at it with a ho-hum sort of chagrin. Then they tasted it. Now, picadillo is one of those dinners that commands universal adoration. I love it because it has introduced new flavors to our table. I love it because it is fast, fast, fast to make. I’ve had trouble getting through the week without making it…
If you prechop the ingredients, you can get from stove to table in under 15 minutes. (Especially if you have your kids set that table for you. ) Also, because we treat the meat more like a delicious side dish/accompaniment and less like the center of the meal (even though it really is the reason to sit down at the table) we can get at least a meal and a half out of a pound of meat. We eat it with tortillas, rice, black beans, or under fried eggs…
I don’t know how authentic my version is, nor what part of Cuba it might represent, but I can vouch that it will not disappoint.
Picadillo
Ingredients:
Olive oil
1 lb ground beef
1 medium onion
6-8 garlic cloves
1 small tomato
1/2 cup pimento stuffed olives
1 tablespoon capers, drained
1/4 cup ketchup
2 bay leaves
1/4 cup white wine
1 teaspoon cumin
freshly ground pepper, to taste
In a mini-food processor, finely chop the onions and garlic. Set aside. Then finely chop the olives, capers, and tomato.
You can do this ahead of time and refrigerate until you’re ready to cook.While many recipes will leave the olives whole, the dish I first had was of uniform texture...
In a saucepan cook onion, garlic, and bay leaves over medium heat until the onion is soft and translucent. Add the ground beef and stir, breaking up clumps with a fork.
Okay, there are 3 bay leaves here….experiment
When the meat is cooked through, add the white wine and let simmer down, then add the olives, capers, ketchup, cumin and pepper and simmer until the picadillo thickens.
Discard the bay leaves and serve warm.
I cannot seem to do justice to the food styling on this one…a pile of ground beef looks like, well…so you will just have to take my word. Just try it. If you eat meat, you will count the ways, too.
Another night, another cake! This one thanks to my mom, who is a regular clipping service, sending me links to New York Times articles I would otherwise miss and recipes with bigger yields than she and my dad can handle. It’s quite a bit like the apricot upside-down cake I made several times this summer (click here for the recipe), and of course not too different from the apple cake Eli and I made together earlier this week.
We’re doing a lot of baking together lately, my youngest son and I, and he’s getting ever better at cracking eggs without letting any shell get into the batter, scraping down the sides of the bowl to incorporate every bit of butter, and whisking flour without it flying all over the kitchen. Cooking together is not just a way to share something I love with my child, not just an easy way for him to learn about ingredients, it’s also art and science and math, and when the results taste this good, I’m happy to bake a cake every day.
The original recipe is here, but it’s crazy sweet (syrup and sugar in the topping!), so I’m reducing the sugar in this version:
11 tablespoons butter, divided
3/4 cup maple syrup
3 to 4 pears, peeled, cored and thinly sliced
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 large eggs
1 1/2 cups flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup milk
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Melt 3 tablespoons butter in a small pan over medium heat; add maple syrup and bring to a boil. Cook for 2 minutes; remove from heat and set aside. Let cool while you peel, core, and slice the pears, then pour it into a 9-inch pie dish and arrange pear slices on top.
Beat remaining 8 tablespoons butter and the sugar until light and fluffy. Add vanilla and eggs, one egg at a time, continuing to mix until smooth. In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking powder and salt.
Add flour mixture to butter mixture in three batches, alternating with milk; do not overmix. Carefully spread batter over pears–or, if you are 4, dump the batter onto the fruit, sending it flying up the sides of the pan. Try to get the batter evenly distributed over the pears as they slide around in their pool of syrup.
Bake until top of cake is golden brown and edges begin to pull away from sides of pan, about 45 to 50 minutes; a toothpick inserted into center should come out clean. Let cake cool for 5 minutes.
Run a knife around edge of pan; put a plate on top of cake and carefully flip it so plate is on bottom and pan is on top. Serve warm or at room temperature.
I grew up in a little town (it calls itself a village, and while I find the word a little precious, it fits) of big, pretty houses on smallish lawns. The yards weren’t fenced, and my neighborhood didn’t have sidewalks, which made it a pretty soft place for a kid to grow up running around with her friends, racing from one yard to the next as our game developed. Our yard was part of the action, too, until my dad realized that the front got a lot more direct sun than the backyard, and so that’s where the vegetable garden went. Screened by a pretty hedge of deep pink and white beach roses, the garden produced peas, beans, tomatoes, broccoli and lettuce, among other vegetables. My dad established another small garden next to the side door and encouraged a patch of blackberries at the end of the driveway. Volunteer squash and tomatoes sprang up from the compost pile and, as my siblings and I grew up and needed less yard to play in, Dad cultivated gradually larger swaths of the backyard, too.
Now my parents have retired to a big piece of property in rural Connecticut, where my dad has an enormous garden and orchard, and I’m the one with an urban garden. Now, this is not the kind of really urban gardening that Lisa wrote about last summer. We don’t have a front yard here in San Francisco, but we can at least do our planting in the ground, not a truck (though honestly, my kids would prefer a truck).
For now, while my children are young and require a lot of my attention for their cultivation, we’re keeping the garden small. (A friend, whose youngest child is the age of my oldest, has recently converted her entire backyard into an edible space; no lawn at all, just paths made and lined with herbs, blueberry bushes and fruit trees in sunny spots along the fences, vegetables — some in beds, some (like the artichokes) standing alone — sprouting up in every spare nook. I dream of such a yard, someday). We’re still learning what we can
produce here in our foggy neighborhood; we don’t get a lot of heat or sun, but we have a pretty long growing season; greens do very well, tomatoes do not. And whenever one of my kids has an urge to plant a seed, I encourage the impulse even if I know, as with yesterday’s apple seed, it’s not likely to bear edible fruit. Some times, it’s important simply to plant a seed.
future apple treestrawberries and chardlettuces, agretti, and zucchinican you spot the artichoke?
Like any family, we fall in to dinner ruts, when I feel like our meals fall into two categories: something with rice or something with pasta. This is exacerbated by the fact that I’m feeding two fairly picky eaters, and of course we are also limiting ourselves by choosing not to eat meat or fish. So it was a little thrill the other day when my mom sent me a recipe that looked like something the boys would eat. It does fall into the “something over pasta” category, and in fact uses 
