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Veggie Burger in Turtles All the Way Down // Cook Your Books

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In this  Cook Your Books  series, I had chosen 15 books to read in 2018 based on somewhat arbitrarily chosen categories; I failed. I failed not to read (I read a ton), but I failed to blog.  So I reignited the quest in 2019. My theory (bogus it might turn out to be) is that all 15 of these books will somehow connect to food.  And I plan to write about that food.   It turns out that these entries are a sort of long-form blog-post. So settle in.  This  first for 2019  installment is  a novel about anxiety. About a year ago, I sat around the dinner table with part of my family and I asked for four recommendations for book categories, and this (a book about anxiety) was one of them. And I have to tell you, outside of non-fiction, this was a tough one. A lot of fiction may include anxious characters, but not many where the anxiety rides front and center, but John Green's young adult novel, Turtles all the Way Down , does just tha...
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Cookbook #45: Mastering the Art of French Cooking

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Adapted from Cookbook #45:  Mastering the Art of French Cooking (1961, my edition is 2001) Recipe: Filets de Poisson Bercy aux Champignons (Fish Fillets Poached in White Wine With Mushrooms) Well, here we are with The Cookbook.  Not just any ole cookbook, but The One.  Oh, Julia, how we love thee.  Julia professed she was no fan of blogs that went in for stunts , such as the infamous Julie Powell blog.  Stunts were too flimsy for our Julia.   So I guess that she would suppose this stunt of mine to cook page 210 from every cookbook is too flimsy.  But so be it.  Let the flimsy stunts carry on.  Join me, will you? So under Julia's watchful eye, I made a lovely poached fish with butter, cream, Swiss cheese, and more butter.  How could it not be amazing?  And it was. While this is a deceptively simple dish, you might want to save it for more special occasions, if for no other reason than you'll need to diet for three...
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Ahi Tuna Poke Bowl with Snap Pea and Edamame Salad

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What I love the most about my CSA box is the surprise every Tuesday. While Full Belly Farm sends an email newsletter on Monday announcing what they will be sending, I like to resist that siren call and to open the box to find tomatoes and grapes and basil and potatoes.  It's like my own Tuesday-afternoon version of Chopped. Recently one of my mystery ingredients was cabbage. As in more cabbage . As in this is the third time I have gotten cabbage this summer. I never knew there wold be so much cabbage in July.  While certainly this is the tail end of the season for cabbage, it is the key ingredient in all of your slaw needs this summer.  And what better way to make a slaw than one that accompanies an ahi tuna poke bowl?  Have you noticed, by the way, the recent popularity in rice bowl cooking?  They're  everywhere .  As in   everywhere .  Everywhere .  This fascination with servi...
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Ottolenghi's Salmon Steaks in Chraimeh Sauce

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Oh, what a sauce this is.   What a glorious, glorious sauce. And it comes from our new Jerusalem cookbook, from one of this blog's favorite chefs and current culinary darling, Yotam Ottolenghi.  I need not detail that this blog has featured recipes from Ottolenghi here and here and here and here ,  but I will anyway because, whoo boy, I love these recipes.  This sauce comes from the Sephardic Jews, who resided on the Iberian peninsula until the Spanish Inquisition.  After their expulsion from Spain in 1492, many Sephardic Jews were folded into the Mizrahi communities in Northern Africa and the Middle East.  Such intermingling of people and cultures has produced some culinary superstars; this being no exception.  Indeed, you can taste the Spanish, Moroccan, and Libyan influence on this sauce. Sephardim pride themselves on their chraimeh recipes, and often serve them at Rosh Hashanah and Passover celebrations (whereas Ashkenazim might serv...
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Ottolenghi's Lemon and Eggplant Risotto

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Risotto is such a delightful dish. Comforting, creamy, simple, stable.   And I am a huge fan . As in, I will make me a risotto any chance I get, with any sort of ingredient you can imagine. It doesn't matter--any season.  Spring--lemon and peas;  Summer--tomato and parmesan;  Fall--mushroom;  Winter--butternut squash and pancetta.  If it's in your fridge, you can put it in this Northern Italian rice dish. However, you will want a very specific kind of rice--a high starch, medium- or short-grain rice--in order separate this delicacy from any other rice dish. The high starch means that as you cook it, it releases its starch, making that requisite creamy smoothness to risotto. The most popular risotto rice in the United States is, hands down, Arborio rice. This short-grained rice isn't as starchy as some of its popular Italian counterparts, but it is the most easily procured. However, a...
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