i was much too hungry to take pictures

January 5: Baked potatoes with the vegetarian works: cheese, broccoli, sour cream, sauteed mushrooms. I made an extra one for Monkey to have the next day; she enjoyed flinging it around.

January 6: Weird dish of pasta baked with stuff that was threatening to go bad in the refrigerator: tomato and roasted red pepper soup from Trader Joe's (we did not really enjoy this as soup), about a third of a container each of cottage cheese and ricotta cheese, shredded mozarella on top. I called it "weird" but in fact my husband had seconds and Monkey absolutely loved it. I think she's sick of macaroni and cheese but she ate several good meals of this.

January 7: Takeout from our neighborhood Ethiopian place: a vegetarian combo and two veggie sambusas. When I was picking up our food I ran into one of the dads from my parents' group doing the same thing. It's an unstoppable force.

January 8: Leftover Ethiopian takeout, supplemented with some homemade red lentil and carrot wot. I think that the amount of food included in a vegetarian combo at an Ethiopian restaurant could serve as a leading economic indicator: we used to be able to get two meals out of this takeout, but in the last few months I swear the portion has gotten smaller.

Also, our favorite (stunningly gorgeous, down-to-earth, and incredibly kind) waitress doesn't seem to work at the restaurant anymore. Truly, the Good Old Days are over.

January 9: My husband convinces me to order pizza. He does not have to try very hard.

January 10: Celery and shallots (yes, really--we're cleaning out the refrigerator, here) baked with a little milk (it was supposed to be heavy cream, but the cream had developed a smell that was just very wrong) and Parmesan cheese. Potatoes roasted with garlic and herbs. In my imagination this meal was very French, you know? But in reality I was kind of underwhelmed. I blame the lack of heavy cream.

Also, it was not enough food. So later we had some bread (oh yes, I am still baking bread almost every day, because I am crazy) and cheese, and chocolate leftover from our Christmas stockings.

day by day, by day, by day...

The title of this post is a tribute to my sister, who recently managed to turn a dedication in a second-hand book into a "Meet the Parents" reference. If that's not talent, I don't know what is.

The book in question (a Christmas present from her to me) is a copy of The Kitchen Diaries, by Nigel Slater, and it's fantastic. It's full of simple, wholesome, seasonal recipes, of course, beautifully described and lushly photographed--everything you'd expect from contemporary food writing. But what I really appreciate about the book is its honesty. Slater intersperses his original recipes with occasional descriptions of takeout dinners, an ode to the joys of frozen fish sticks, and a confession that some days he just can't be arsed (his word, of course) to cook.

Here, for example, is his entry from March 3:

In my smug haze of good housekeeping from yesterday's baking session, not to mention my arch disdain for factory-produced foods, I fail to notice there is bugger all to eat in the house. At seven thirty I dash to the corner shop, returning with a can of baked beans, a bag of frozen fries and some beers.

That sounds familiar.

The book got me thinking about food blogs--diaries of another sort--and how heavily curated they often are. Nobody talks about the night they just gave up and ordered pizza, or the bunches of Swiss chard that they intended to make into something Alice Waters-worthy but kept putting off until the greens went slimy in the back of the crisper drawer.

By "they," of course, I mean "me." So I thought it would be an interesting experiment to catalog our dinners for the month of January. I won't post every day (obv.!) but I will confess what we ate--what we actually ate, not what I intended to cook, and would have if I were a better person--each day. Hopefully this will shame me into (1) cooking; (2) blogging.

I suppose I could write about Monkey's dinners, as well, but truth be told I don't think it would be very interesting. At 17 months she eats little other than boxed macaroni and cheese (to my deep chagrin) and yogurt with lingonberry jam (to my everlasting delight), when she eats anything much at all. I doubt my blogging would shame her into expanding her repetoire--though I suppose it might help inspire me to make more of an effort with her food.

January 1: Dinner at the home of Monkey's aunt, uncle, and cousin. My sister-in-law, who supposedly does not cook, made pumpkin risotto and a kale and beet salad, with pumpkin pie for dessert. Monkey loved the risotto, and this, combined with the fact that we managed to get through the evening without her investigating the fire in the fireplace OR pulling the glass-ornament-bedecked Christmas tree down on top of her, made me wonder if she might be turning just a teeny bit civilized.

January 2: Mushroom and barley pie with mushroom gravy, leftover from our belated Christmas celebration (we were sick on the 25th, not to mention snowed in)a few days ago .

January 3: Fresh corn cakes for me, barbecued field roast sandwich for the Mr., and fries filched from Daddy's plate for Monkey--we stopped at the Elysian Brewpub after a visit to the Frye Art Museum. Occasionally we like to pretend to be hip urban parents, but we can only keep up the charade for a couple of hours at a time.

January 4: The year's first cooking. Red lentil and sweet potato soup, a variation on the first recipe in The Kitchen Diaries (I notice that Nigel managed to hit his stride right on the 1st while I didn't manage to cook anything until three days later--well, he is a professional after all).

We ate the soup with what seems like the year's umpteenth baking--a loaf of no-knead bread with 3/4 teaspoon of smoked paprika and some olives leftover from our New Year's Eve nibbles chopped up and stirred into the dough. Yes, I'm the last person in the world to jump on the no-knead bread bandwagon, but now I've officially jumped. It's fantastic stuff (I use the speedy version of the recipe--the original version is a giant pain in the ass, for bread that is not much superior), but good grief, I can't keep up. It feels like I am baking bread every day! There are worse things I suppose.

Monkey, who went to bed before the soup was ready, was offered macaroni and cheese and some sauteed mushrooms, but preferred to dine on air and a piece or two of carpet lint instead.

Red Lentil and Sweet Potato Soup
Adapted from Nigel Slater. The original version of the recipe called for pumpkin, but sweet potatoes were what I had on hand. I also simplified the technique a little bit.

For the soup:
1 small onion, peeled and chopped
2 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed
Fresh ginger (Slater specifies "a walnut-sized knob." I don't know what that means. My soup ended up pretty ginger-y.)
1 C plus 2 T split red lentils
1 1/4 tsp ground turmeric
1 1/4 tsp chili powder
2 medium sweet potatoes, peeled and chopped

For the onion topping:
2 medium onions
2 T olive oil
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
2 cloves garlic, peeled and thinly sliced

Put the onion and garlic in a medium saucepan. Peel the ginger, cut it into thin shreds, and add it to the pan. Add the lentils and 6 cups of water. Bring to a boil, then turn down the heat to a simmer. Add the turmeric, chili powder, and sweet potatoes, along with some salt. Simmer, covered, for about 20 minutes or until everything is very tender.

While the soup is cooking, make the onion topping. Peel the onions and cut into thin rings. Cook them in oil in a skillet until they begin to color. Add the cayenne and garlic, and continue to cook until the onions are deeply caramelized.

Remove the lid from the soup and cook it down a bit (you can do this, per Slater's instructions by "turn[ing] up the heat, boiling hard for five minutes," or you can do it more lackadaisically, like I did). Remove from the heat and puree in small batches in a blender, pouring the pureed soup into a bowl. Check for seasoning, and serve with a spoonful of the onions on top.

it's too bad we have plenty of diapers

That is the conclusion my husband and I came to last night, as we sat in the living room after dinner, watching a baseball game online and trading commentary that was, as usual, ever-so-much snappier than that of the actual announcers. 

Our reasoning went something like this: He was craving some dessert, preferably pastry. An almond-and-chocolate bear claw from Whole Foods, in fact.  Which we always buy a pair of (cue Newman from Seinfeld) when we go there to buy diapers.  Thus, especially since I now wanted a pastry too, it was a shame there was no diaper run imminent.  

We hatched all kinds of crazy schemes, starting with driving all the way to Whole Foods right then just for pastries and winding up with quitting our jobs and starting a dessert delivery service ("Do you think people would order takeout dessert?" he said.  Hello!  Raise your hand if you're not currently fantasizing about obscure flavors of small-batch ice cream and brownies knocking at your door.)  Then I said, "Well, I could make a pastry."

For about a minute that seemed like the craziest idea of all.  But then I went into the kitchen and fired up the oven.  I rummaged through the cupboards and chopped walnuts and dark chocolate and threw shredded coconut around willy-nilly.  I rolled out the last sheet of puff pastry from the freezer and, in a drift of flour, brushed it with butter, sugar, and spices and folded it into something like a messy braid.

People, this was so much fun.  It was the antidote to my Memorial Day dessert.  It was possibly the purest, most carefree enjoyment I have had in the kitchen in the past year.  Nobody's empty stomach was waiting for the results of my efforts, and there was no recipe to measure up to.  It was just cooking for the sheer creative pleasure of it.

And that's a good note on which to return to this blog.  We were out of town for part of last month, and then I felt like I'd fallen way behind, and feeling behind is a recipe for procrastination.  I've actually started a post a couple of times since we got back, but each time it felt like a burden and went unfinished.  This is supposed to be fun, right?

Anyway, we stayed up way too late (until 10:05!) waiting for the pastry to come out of the oven, and the result was not at all subtle or refined, but I think it was worth it.

Dark Chocolate-Walnut Pastry Braid

3 T butter

2 T brown sugar

1/2 tsp ground cardamom

1/4 tsp ground cinnamon

1/3 C walnut halves, chopped

2 oz. dark chocolate, finely slivered

1/4 C shredded coconut

1 sheet puff pastry, thawed

Preheat oven to 400 F.  Melt the butter and sugar together in a small saucepan, and stir in the spices.  In a small bowl, mix the walnuts, chocolate, and coconut together. 

On a floured work surface, roll the puff pastry into a rectangle about...um, 14 by 10 inches, I guess?...and transfer it to a lightly greased baking sheet.  Pour all but a teaspoon or two of the melted butter mixture onto the pastry, along the long axis in the center third of the dough.  Put the walnut-chocolate-coconut mixture on top of that.  

Then use a table knife to make about  7 or 8 angled horizontal cuts to make a sort of "fringe" on each of the outer thirds of the pastry.  Lap the fringes toward the center to create a braided effect.  It helps if you've had a glass or so of wine.  Drizzle the remaining butter mixture over the top of the braid.  

Bake at 400 F until you absolutely cannot stand waiting any longer, or about 20-25 minutes. 

getting cultured

I mentioned in a comment on a previous post that yogurt is one of Monkey's favorite foods. She eats so much yogurt, in fact, that I think almost any food is starting to taste better to her with a little yogurt stirred in. She has it with fruit and oatmeal for breakfast, and more often than not with vegetables and rice or multigrain cereal for lunch and dinner.

For a while I didn't even realize that I was making all her meals on essentially the same template. But it's more or less how we eat--a vegetable, a grain, and a little dollop of dairy just seems like a balanced meal to me. It's funny to realize how early and how unconsciously one transmits one's food culture to a baby.

The Mr. and I have been eating a lot of yogurt lately, too--over carrots for dinner, on top of muesli for breakfast, in a brunch dish I haven't even told you about yet, and in the dish of sauteed zucchini and chickpeas pictured above.

And we're not alone.  The New York Times food section recently published a whole feature on yogurt. Over at 101 cookbooks, Heidi marinated tofu in yogurt and spices (we tried out that recipe, in fact, and it was tasty but also convinced me once and for all that even vegetarians need a grill); Luisa of The Wednesday Chef spooned it over fish and then rubbed it onto chicken. I don't know what's behind this sudden interest in yogurt from all quarters. Maybe that combination of heartiness and healthfulness makes a perfect spring tonic.

Zucchini and Chickpeas in Creamy Tahini Sauce

Adapted from kardemumma

1/4 C plain yogurt
2 T tahini
1 medium clove garlic, minced fine (next time I’ll use 2)
Salt
Ground black pepper
1 T olive oil
2 small zucchini (I’d use 3 next time, as a matter of fact)
1 15-oz can chickpeas, drained
A wedge of fresh lemon

Combine the first five ingredients in a bowl and stir to combine. If possible, put this in the refrigerator for an hour or so to let the flavors blend.

Slice the zucchini and saute in olive oil until the slices have a nice color (that’s kardemumma blogger Viktoria’s wording; isn’t it nice?). Add the chickpeas and heat through. Squeeze the lemon juice over the top.

Transfer the zucchini and chickpeas to a serving bowl, add the yogurt-tahini mixture, and stir to coat the zucchini and chickpeas with the dressing. Serve immediately.

Makes 2 or 3 servings.

*****

A crunchy carrot salad makes a nice companion for the creamy zucchini. The recipe below is adapted from The Ethnic Paris Cookbook, which, despite its unfortunate title, is an excellent book. In addition to recipes it contains reviews of restaurants, food shops, and markets, making it one in a long and growing list of food-related things that make me want to visit Paris again.

Carrot Salad with Fresh Citrus Juice

3 carrots, peeled (that is what the original recipe called for but I think they must have been working with some honkin' big carrots--next time I'll use more, maybe as many as 6)
Juice of 1/2 of a red grapefruit or 1 orange
1 T sugar
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/8 tsp ground cumin
2 T toasted pine nuts

Combine the first five ingredients in a bowl and stir together. Sprinkle the pine nuts on top.

Makes 2 servings.

not really a day off

But we did manage to capture a deceptively restful-looking picture or two.

For a moment, though, when my brother-in-law announced "I'll take some more of that dessert please," as four of us sat around in the backyard alternately eating a Memorial Day picnic dinner and wrangling Monkey and her two-year-old cousin, I thought that this apple-ginger galette might disappear without any record of its existence at all.

And that would have been a shame, because this was a possibly miraculous dessert, that resisted numerous opportunities for ruin.

I had started out intending to make a Rhubarb Ginger Galette from Simply Recipes, which my friend x. had recommended and my friend T. had also given the thumbs-up. Except I planned to make mine with apples, because that's what we had on hand. (So much for seasonal cooking, right? Well, in my defense, or perhaps just the opposite, the apples were in season when I bought them.) So, while the Mr. cleaned up the backyard in preparation for the picnic, I set up the playpen in the kitchen and settled Monkey in with some toys and a favorite book or two. By the time I'd sliced the apples she was hungry for lunch, so I left them to soften slowly on the stove while I fed her. Then she was ready for a nap, during which I thought I'd make the pastry for the galette.

Except that after putting Monkey down in her crib I realized I was exhausted. So I folded a couple loads of laundry and then thought I'd lie down for just a few minutes. Which stretched into, well, quite a while.

Fortunately, I happened to have a library copy of Deborah Madison's Local Flavors handy, and paged through it while I was lying down. (Because what's more relaxing than lying down? Lying down and looking through a cookbook, that's what.) In that book is a recipe for a "Rustic Tart of Quinces, Apples, and Pears" made with puff pastry. And we happened to have some puff pastry in the freezer leftover from dinner a few days before:


(Asparagus and Gruyere Tart from Under the High Chair)

This was quite a happy coincidence--I'd never bought or cooked with puff pastry before last week. Brilliant, I figured, worst case scenario I'll just use puff pastry instead of a homemade crust.

Which, of course, is exactly what came to pass, because after naptime the Mr. needed to make the rest of our picnic dinner, and somebody needed to mind Monkey, who these days not only army-crawls alarmingly fast, wants to pull up on any and every vertical surface, and generally thinks that sitting around looking at books is for chumps, but also, this day, was having a particularly rough time of it. We think she's working on some teeth. At least eight of them, I should hope, for all the misery they seem to be causing her.

So to be honest, I'm not quite sure how long I ended up leaving the galette in the oven, because by the time I got it ready to bake it was time for Monkey's dinner, and I had to keep popping into the kitchen to check on the pastry in between spooning bites of carrot and yogurt into her mouth. (Yes, that's right, I sauteed the apples while feeding Monkey lunch and baked the galette while feeding her dinner. People, it took me all afternoon to make this dessert! But you should try it--it's really easy, I swear!)

I was multitasking quite impressively at this point, because along with baking dessert and feeding Monkey dinner, I was also doing a little silent fuming, along the lines of why can't I get just five uninterrupted minutes to do something in the kitchen, etc., etc. And that brings me to the rather obvious point that there is no such thing as a three-day weekend, or even really a day off, when you have an infant in the house.

I'd like to say that sitting on the picnic blanket later on and feeding Monkey little bites of apple from the pastry--her first taste of dessert--made it all worthwhile. And it did, of course, but one of the most difficult parts of parenting for me is the way that there's just not enough time for everything. There's the housework and the paid work and the childminding, and when that's done one needs to take care of oneself, and what's left over for creative work is pretty close to nil. So each time I go into the kitchen lately I find that I have to revise my plans and pare down my expectations, sometimes more than once. And to me it seems especially difficult when that happens in relation to cooking, which is not only self-expression but also a way of showing care for loved ones.

So it was nice, after Monkey went to bed for the night, to have a few minutes to check in with the Mr. and realize that he is struggling with some of the same thoughts (a point I hope I can bring myself to remember the next time I am tempted to engage in some silent fuming). And nice, then, to have a few minutes to myself and write up the notes for this recipe.


Apple-Ginger Galette

Sort-of adapted/melded from Simply Recipes and Local Flavors, with thanks to Aimee of Under the High Chair for teaching me how to use puff pastry.

3 apples
2 T + 1 tsp butter, divided
2 T sugar
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground ginger
1 sheet (about 7 oz.) frozen puff pastry
1 T finely chopped candied ginger
1 oz (or so) sharp cheddar, grated
Flour for work surface

Peel, core, and slice the apples. Melt 2 T of the butter in a large skillet and saute the apples over low heat until they soften a bit. Add the sugar, cinnamon, and ground ginger, and continue to cook over low heat until the apples are soft and syrupy. Remove from heat and let cool. Meanwhile, take the puff pastry out to thaw.

Preheat the oven to 400 F. Stir the candied ginger and shredded cheese into the cooled apples. On a floured work surface, roll the puff pastry into a square about 12 inches on a side. Don't worry if it's messy and uneven; after all, you're making a galette precisely because you don't have time or don't want to worry about such things. Carefully fold the pastry in quarters, transfer to a lightly greased baking sheet, and unfold. Spoon the apple mixture into the center of the puff pastry. Pull the corners of the pastry toward the center (they won't touch).

Melt the remaining 1 tsp butter in the skillet in which you cooked the apples. With a pastry brush, snag the little bits of left-behind spices and mix them into the butter, then brush the butter over the top of the galette.

Bake the galette at 400 F for 15 minutes, then reduce the heat to 375 and bake for about 30 minutes more, until the pastry is puffy and golden-brown.

Serves 6

what to do with leftover baby food, part 1

Lately we've gotten into a pretty good routine with making baby food here at home, but making sure Monkey has something to eat if we're going to be out and about for one of her mealtimes is a different story. There is the mixing up her food, the storing it (we have a set of nice little glass bowls with ill-fitting plastic lids that are just bound to result in a mess one of these days), the figuring out how to refrigerate it, and so on. Last weekend we went out to brunch and it took us an hour to get out the door.

So I thought it might be useful to have a few jars of purchased baby food on hand to throw into a bag for impromptu outings, and last time I was at the grocery store I stocked up. We were a bit late getting home, so I figured, what the heck, let's crack one of these puppies open just to test it out and make sure Monkey likes it.

She did not. She ate all of three bites out of a jar of carrots before turning away in disgust.

I am secretly pleased about this, but even more secretly a little bummed out.

Though to be honest, I thought the carrots were kind of watery and tasteless, myself.

Of course, since I had been so confident that Monkey would eat them (she loves carrots! and babies are reputed to prefer the smooth bliss of jarred food to lumpy old homemade), I fed her straight from the jar, and now I was stuck with a nearly full jar of baby food that nobody much liked and that couldn't be fed to the baby at a later meal. So that's how my lunch yesterday came about:



I apologize for the ugly picture, but that's what happens when a girl tries to sneak off for a hurried assignation with the camera in the middle of the workday.

First, I made a quesadilla with shredded pepper jack cheese and spread a tablespoon or two of the carrot puree on one side of the tortilla before closing it up. That was pretty tasty, and the flavor of the carrots improved with a little heat.

But there were still some carrots left in the jar after I folded up my quesadilla, so I dumped them into the last little bit of leftover chili that I planned to have on the side. (I suppose it's a little odd to post a chili recipe in mid-May, when the rest of the food blogosphere is kvelling over ramps, asparagus, and strawberries. But my neighborhood farmers' market doesn't open until (sob!) early June, so I was trying to use up what was in the pantry. Plus, here in Seattle we'll probably be getting little pockets of chili weather for the next month or so anyway.)

I'd invented the chili on the fly a couple of nights before and been pretty happy with it, but it's possible that the carrots make it even better. They give the dish a creaminess that's unexpected in a chili but not unwelcome. And they thicken it up a bit, too--adding some vegetable puree might be a good last-minute trick for thickening a too-watery soup or stew, if you don't have time to reduce it by simmering. (Similar, it now occurs to me, to the technique of pureeing a portion of a soup and then adding it back to the pan.)

Either of the recipes below would work pretty well with another orange vegetable--winter squash, sweet potatoes--in place of the carrots.

I've heard several parents say that their babies suddenly stopped wanting pureed food, leaving them stuck with a freezer (or a cupboard) full of baby food, so I think this post will be the first in an ongoing series about what to do when you're in that fix.

Carrot Quesadillas

For each quesadilla:
1 large (burrito-size) flour tortilla
about 1 oz. cheese (pepper jack is nice), shredded
1-2 Tbsp pureed carrots

You know how to cook a quesadilla, right? And I won't insult you by giving you permission to add other ingredients if you want--coz you know you can.

Lentil and Sweet Potato Chili (with Pureed Carrot Variation)

1 onion, chopped
6 smallish cloves garlic, minced
2 Tbsp olive oil
1 28-oz can diced tomatoes
1 C brown lentils, washed and picked over
1 Tbsp mild chile molido
1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp oregano
1/8 tsp cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp salt
Water (or stock)
1 roasted red pepper, diced
1 large sweet potato, peeled and diced
1/2 C (or more?) pureed carrot (optional)

Saute the onion and garlic in olive oil until they are soft and just beginning to color. Stir in the tomatoes (with their juices), lentils, spices, and salt. Add some water--exactly how much depends on how thick you like your chili, but make sure that it is at least enough to cover the lentils. Cook on low heat, covered, until the lentils are soft. (The Joy of Cooking says brown lentils take 20 to 30 minutes to cook, but mine were awfully old and wizened, and required at least twice that amount of time. Since brown lentils retain their shape when cooked, you don't need to worry much about overcooking them.) Add the diced pepper and sweet potato, and simmer until the sweet potato is cooked, about 20 minutes more. Stir in the pureed carrot, if using, and heat through. This is good topped with shredded pepper jack to serve.

Makes 4 to 6 servings.

101 uses for dried fruit puree

Well, maybe not quite 101, but I promised some more ideas about how to use the puree of apricot, prune, and raisin that sweetens the muesli recipes I recently posted, so here goes.

Before we get started, I wanted to say again that this puree was inspired by a similar one that was part of the Bircher Muesli recipe from delicious:days. I think I mentioned that in the text of my previous post but forgot to give the nod when I typed up the recipe.

And on a different introductory note: yes, I do realize that dried fruit puree looks like poop. Let me tell you, my husband was a little alarmed the first time he saw an ice-cube tray full of it sitting in our freezer. (Freezer contents in houses I have previously lived in have included a dead storm petrel and several tupperware containers full of assorted insects, so I guess he had reason to be concerned.) And now that we have broached the subject of poop, I will say that ever since Monkey started eating a spoonful of this stuff with breakfast every day, she has not had any trouble in that department. So if you (or more precisely, I hope, your baby) are feeling the effects of too much rice cereal, I highly recommend dried fruit puree as a tasty cure. (There, yes, I just blogged about my kid's poop. But I have managed to avoid the subject for nearly four months, so really, I think you should consider yourself lucky.)

Anyway, on to topics of conversation more appropriate for the table....

I think the fruit puree would be delicious in this carrot variation on muesli from A Veggie Venture, which I'm dying to try. In fact, Monkey has already had the baby version of this recipe; substitute an equal quantity of pureed carrots for the applesauce in my Baby Bircher recipe and call it (because I can't resist) Baby Bunny. She might like it even better than the apple version, to be perfectly honest.

And of course it would also be good stirred into either oatmeal or yogurt on its own. Sweet and fruity with no refined sugar--take that, YoBaby!

Spread it on toast fingers for a snack for the baby, or pair it with peanut butter for a sandwic for toddlers on up. Add it to pancake or waffle batter (or maybe heat it up with some maple syrup to go on top). Use it in a quickbread or carrot cake.

And then there are the savory possibilities. Combined with some braised alliums and a bit of vinegar, the puree could be a player in a nice chutney. Throw it in with some cooked carrots and a pinch of cumin for glazed carrots--doesn't that sound pretty? And--this is going to be a bit vague, because I don't know a thing about cooking meat--I'm pretty sure you could also add some to a skillet after deglazing to make a rather sophisticated sauce for chicken or pork.

But more simply, it's delicious spread on a cracker and topped with a thin slice of aged cheese (that's Parmigiano-Reggiano in the photo above). The high proportion of apricot in my version of the recipe gives the puree a sunny flavor that's especially nice paired with the cheese's bite. If you wanted to get really fancy, you could add a bit of mustard to the puree for an impromptu mostarda.

I didn't invent the pairing of dried fruit and cheese, of course, but I am pretty tickled to have figured out, quite accidentally, how to do it on the cheap. This puree is not much different from the stuff they were recently peddling at my local grocery store, asking $6 for about a quarter-cup nubbin. (Six dollars! And it didn't even look any less like poop* than the homemade version!)

*Hey, if I'm going to talk about poop in a post I may as well go all out, right?

Anyway, I think I may try to keep this stuff on hand, even after Monkey outgrows the habit of eating a bowl full of mush for breakfast.

And here, to save you a click, is the recipe once again:


Dried Fruit Puree

Adapted from delicious:days

Most any combination of dried fruits could be used in this puree (I'd like to try adding some candied ginger, too); just use an equal volume of fruit and water.

1/2 C dried apricots
1/4 C prunes
1/4 C dark raisins
1 C water

Combine all of the ingredients in a small saucepan and simmer, covered, over low heat for about 20 minutes or until the fruits are very plump and tender. Let cool a bit and then puree in a blender or food processor until smooth.

This puree keeps in the freezer for quite a while, but (due to the high sugar content, I think) it may not freeze solid. Test this out before tying up an ice cube tray!