Pearled Barley Salad with Apples, Pomegranate Seeds and Pine Nuts

I found this recipe several places online.

1/3 cups pine nuts
1/4 cup plus 2 T extra-virgin oilive oil
3 T white wine vinegar
1 small shallot, minced
Salt and freshly ground pepper
4 cups Thyme-Scented Pearled Barley (see below)
1 large tart apple, such as Honeycrisp, cored and cut into 1/2-inch pieces
1/2 cup pomegranate seeds (from 1 pomegranate)
1/2 cup chopped flat-leaf parsley
Preheat the oven to 350°. Spread the pine nuts in a pie plate and toast until golden, about 5 minutes. Let cool. In a bowl, whisk the oil with the vinegar and shallot and season with salt and pepper. Add the Thyme-Scented Pearled Barley, pine nuts, apple, pomegranate seeds and parsley; toss before serving. If you make it ahead, leave the pine nuts out until the second day.

Thyme Scented Barley
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 1/2 cups pearled barley (10 ounces)
1 small onion, finely diced
2 thyme sprigs
3 cups water Kosher salt
In a large saucepan, heat the olive oil. Add the pearled barley and cook over moderate heat, stirring, until lightly toasted; the grains will turn slightly opaque just before browning. Add the onion and thyme and cook over low heat, stirring, until the onion is softened, about 5 minutes. Add the water and 1 teaspoon of kosher salt and bring to a boil. Cover and cook over very low heat until the water is absorbed and the grains are tender. Fluff the grains and discard the thyme sprigs. Season the grains with salt and serve.

Harvest Time Pumpkin Cake

I rediscovered this recipe - obviously not made for decades!

1 pkg yellow cake mix
2 tsp pumpkin pie spice
2 tsp baking soda
1 can (16-oz) pumpkin
2 eggs
1/4 water
1 pkg (8 oz semi-sweet chocolate morsels)
1 cup chopped nuts



Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour a BUNDT pan. In a large bowl combine cake mix, spice and baking soda. Add eggs, pumpkin and water. Beat 3 min. on med. speed of mixer or until batter is smooth. Fold in morsels and nuts. Pour batter into prepared pan and bake for 40-45 min or until cake test done. Cool for 15 min. in pan. Turn out and continue cooling on wire rack. Top with spice glaze and a sprinkle of chopped nuts.

Spice glaze:
1 cup sifted confectioner's sugar
1 T milk
1 T. light corn syrup
1 tsp. spice of your choice

In a small bowl, combine all ingredients and beat until smooth. Use rubber spatula or a large spoon and put glaze on top of cooled cake. Then use a table knife to spread around top of cake wedges. The glaze will then run down the sides slowly and beautifully.

Blue Apron? Plated? Peach Dish, Just Add Cooking or Hello Fresh? And How About That Marley Spoon? And the Latest on Green Chef and Purple Carrot

Updated December 5, 2018 - If you don't want to read through this whole post (what follows is a lengthy discussion of my own experimentation with these services), we recommend Purple Carrot and Blue Apron wholeheartedly with Marley Spoon, Green Chef, and Hello Fresh as close seconds. We have tried at leat eight of the services available for delivery in New England, including Blue Apron. NEWS** SunBasket was out and we tried it May 22, 2016.  Not impressed. Think we need to stay away from any service with the word "paleo" in the choices.

RECYCLING NEWS** Blue Apron has postage -free recycling - print your label and schedule a USPS (US Postal Service pickup).  SunBasket has UPS free pickup and return of recycled boxes and fillers IF you don't have recycling in your area. The both accept clean, full, defrosted ice packs by return. It looks like Hello Fresh, Green Chef. Others, like Purple Carrot have all begun recycling efforts in the ensuing years since I wrote this article. 

Here's a link to an interesting article with some comments that resonate with others about the carbon footprint that results from these food services. In defense, I wasted a lot more food, actual food, when we weren't using these services. Let's face it, most of us don't buy three stalks of asparagus, 1/4 of a red cabbage, two tablespoons of demi-glace. One comment claims that a cookbook and a farmer's market will do the same for you for 1/5 the price. Au contraire, I say. We use the boxes over and over for storage, for transport, etc. Yes, we do throw some of the cardboard in recycling, but we throw a ton more away at my place of work than I do at home. The ice packs are used over and over when I bring food elsewhere. I think if you live life wisely (and perhaps raising your own food, slaughtering your own animals, and canning and preserving every morsel is the wisest but totally impractical for my family), this service can actually reduce the carbon footprint that others are complaining about.

We've recently been addicted to Purple Carrot. Go figure! We are carnivores but we love the three nights of vegan meals. The taste? Amazing. The ingredients? Very varied and experimental for us. The health? Go, Purple Carrot! One of my colleagues is vegan and she was so excited to try this because she spent so much money and time planning her weekly menus. I figured I'd give it a try to include more legumes and other foods that we didn't include in our diet. So far, after a few months? We are exclusively Purple Carrot three days a week. It's a bit more expensive, but delicious and healthy. It does have an Asian focus, but many of the food services do. You can choose between Chef's Choice, Hi-Protein or Quick and Easy. We choose Chef's Choice. They are all $12 per meal ($72 a week.) You also have the Tom Brady TB12 meals for $13 per meal (high-performance.) We are stickin' to Chef's Choice and we love them.

These are older updates:
For quality, price, taste, and wholesomeness, we do still feel loyal to Blue Apron for carnivores and pescivores.  For awhile, we mixed it up and ordered in a four-week pattern from one or the other. (Blue Apron one week, Marley Spoon the next week, Green Chef the third week, and Hello Fresh the fourth).

Note that they all have their strengths: Peach Dish has a terrific southern style, Just Add Cooking is local to Boston, Marley Spoon has some great ingredients, Hello Fresh lists allergens and removes most of them from their recipes (gluten and nuts, for instance), and Green Chef used all organic ingredients. Sun Basket offers paleo options. However, Blue Apron is consistently good, especially for the price, recipe cards, and packing.

At first, I was reluctant to sign up for Blue Apron, a home-cooked meal delivery service that a half-dozen of my colleagues had subscribed to last summer, 2014. I dug in my heels and said, "What? Why?" Gerry likes to shop daily, after all. We both love to cook.  Why did we need a service to choose our meals and send us food?

Well, one night in the fall of 2014, Gerry (who up until now has planned meals during the week; I planned weekend meals) was especially uninspired. He brought home a small jar of ordinary pasta sauce and a box of store-brand spaghetti from the grocery story. For dinner. That's it. No fresh herbs. No unusual spices. No greens. And certainly no fresh vegetables.

Sous Vide Center-Cut Beef Shanks and Butter-Poached Baby Potatoes

I've had my Anova Sous Vide stick for at least a year and a half and have never had the courage to use it! It seemed so complicated with its plastic bin, rack and heat cover.

This weekend, while searching for recipes online for center-cut beef shanks (a cheaper cut that needs to roast or cook for a long time to be tender), I decided to rip off that bandaid and get out the sous vide and vacuum sealer. Now, why did I wait so long?

And here's what I did:

I took each beef shank (1 pound each) and sprinkled it on both sides with freshly-ground salt and pepper. I placed a sliced onion and sliced garlic clove on top and a sprig of fresh thyme and vacuumed sealed each in its own bag. When the water bath had reached 155 degrees, I placed the bags in the rack ... and waited for the 20 hour cook. They will be done at 3 pm ... tomorrow.

I sliced the baby potatoes and sprinkled with freshly-ground salt and pepper. I placed them in vacuum bags with 1 long slice of butter and some fresh parsley. They will cook in a 195 degree water bath for two hours.

I also sliced large red beets and placed them in a vacuum bag and sealed with salt and pepper and some balsamic vinegar. They will cook in the 195 degree water bath for 45 minutes to an hour.



When all is done, the beef will be seared in a very hot pan for a minute or two a side before serving. The potatoes will be browned quickly in a hot pan. The beets will be dried with a paper towel, sprinkled with oil, more salt and pepper, roasted walnuts and goat cheese. In addition, I will roast a combination of sliced fennel, carrots, garlic, onions and red, yellow and orange peppers and serve my mother's spinach salad.  Bon appetit and Happy Indigenous People's Day!

Chocolate-Ricotta-Zucchini Bread

Just want you want in the fall! Zucchini Bread. Found a recipe for a Lemon Zuccini Bread that looks yummy. But I settled on Chocolate. Yummy with homemade Roasted Cherry Ice Cream.

Makes two loaves or a sheet of formed cakes and two tiny loaves.

350 degrees until pick comes out clean (cooks fast if in smaller pans)

Grate or shred 3 cups zucchini and place in colander or sieve to drain, pressing down to remove extra liquid.

2 cups flour
2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp. salt
1-1/2 tsps. baking soda
6 T unsweetened cocoa powder

Mix all these dry ingredients together and set aside. Take 1/2 cup of this mixture and add to 3/4 cup mini or not chocolate chips*.

In mixing bowl beat two minutes:
1/2 c. canola oil
1 cup sugar
1/4 c. brown sugar
3 eggs

Add in 2 tsp. vanilla
1/2 cup ricotta cheese (or sour cream or yogurt)
3 cups grated or shredded zucchini

Mix in dry ingredients well and add chocolate chips*

Place in greased baking pans and bake. Remove from pans while still warm but slightly cooled.

Rum Raisin Ice Cream

Before placing the regular ice cream base in the ice water bath, add 1/3 cup dark rum. Chill and add 3/4 cup raisins before placing all in ice cream freezer.  Freeze for at least one hour.

Binging on the Great British Baking Show and Russian Pastry

Gerry and I binge-watched at least four seasons of the Great British Baking Show this summer. It had been recommended and once I started binging, and proselytizing about my new-found crush, I realized that, as with most other hit series, I was years late to the party. Especially this British one.

During one particular B-A-A-A-A-K-E which happened to be pastries, I thought of the favorite savory pastry that had captured my fancy over 25 years ago. It was the kulebiaka (or coulibiac) - a time-consuming Russian first course. The kulebiaka boasts a flaky, buttery pastry that envelopes a filling of either cabbage and chopped hardboiled eggs or salmon, rice and dill. My finished kulebiaka’s crust is garnished with leaves and a rope closure and rises and bakes to golden perfection.

Once sliced, and served with sour cream, it is always met with ooohs and aaaahs across the room. Anton Chekhov wrote in his short story The Siren that “the kulebiaka must make your mouth water; it must lie there before you, a shameless temptation! You cut off a sizable slice and let your fingers play over it. When you bite into it, the butter drips from it like tears.”

I fantasized, recently of course, that Paul Hollywood would have swooned over one of my masterpiece, the kulebiaka. I might have had a handshake.

Long before I was awarded my master’s degree in library science (or MLS) from Boston’s Simmons College, I had returned to college in the late 1980s as an undergraduate. Years earlier I had left behind three years of academic work in History and Political Science at a California university to begin raising my family. A requirement for completing my degree with distinction from a Massachusetts state college was that I must complete more than half of the total required credits (120) at a Massachusetts school. Doing the easy math, I need to complete 150 total credits instead of the normal 120 for a bachelor’s degree. Lucky for me, I had more curiosity than 120 credits anyway.

My favorite courses that second time around were in Russian Studies, which of course fell right smack within my favorite academic areas of interest: history, literature and political science. For a minor in Russian Studies I was also required to take at least a year of Russian language and I memorized the Cyrillic alphabet forwards and backwards. My studies included a tour to the Soviet Union in 1990, a year before my hero USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev’s policies of glasnost and perestroika helped to dismantle the Soviet Union and communism.

My interest in Russia started many years before … as a very young child. Moving to Berkeley, California at the age of six, my family rented an apartment in a big house just three houses from my new elementary school. Our absent landlady was a large, hardy and hearty, block of a Russian woman who was missing most of her right arm. Her infrequent visits, her Russian accent, and her exotic right arm fascinated me. That curiosity led me to other things Russian in my youth, including a book I read my senior year in high school, We the Living by Ayn Rand. It is one I credit with many influences in my life. The young, female protagonist in the book is named Kira. It was years later, after naming my youngest daughter with the Irish version of that name (Ciara and pronounced exactly the same), when I realized just how influential the book had been.

Returning from the study tour in the Soviet Union in 1990, I took up Russian cooking with an energetic passion. My graduation party from college in 1991 was a huge affair with over a hundred friends and family feasting on Russian food and drink. I enlisted the help of some of those friends who cooked and baked with me all week. I rented tables for the backyard and placed centerpieces of pitchers of lilacs, all donated from another friend’s garden. I hired a young Russian man named Sasha who appeared dressed in traditional Slavic costume. He spent the afternoon roaming the yard with his balalaika and entertaining the crowd with lovely Russian folk music. In addition, I contracted a slick-suited pianist named Vladimir who played music by Russian composers on the piano in my living room. It was a tremendously wonderful party and I smile again remembering it nearly three decades later.

So, following that pastry episode on the GBBS, I searched for my recipe books and came across some of my old favorites on my bookshelves, A La Russe: A Cookbook of Russian Hospitality by Darra Goldstein and the Art of Russian Cuisine by Anne Volokh. The copy of my favorite book, Russian Cooking, part of the Time-Life Cooking of the World Series I had collected in the 70s as a young wife, was missing. That book was the one from which I’d learned exactly how to assemble the kulebiaka, using the photographs over a two-page spread.  To my surprise, not one of the Minuteman Libraries had a copy. Thankfully, I found over a dozen copies of Russian Cooking listed in the Massachusetts’ Commonwealth Catalog (or ComCat.) Although I could have requested one through Massachusetts library delivery, I eventually unearthed my own copy.  I discovered the very worn and stained spiral-bound book of recipes and the accompanying hardcover in my basement, mixed in with a few other castaways.

Searching the library catalog, I found a more recent copy of Darra Goldstein’s book (published in 2013 as A Taste of Russia and I’ve added to our collection.) Her book is rich with recipes for Marinated Mushrooms, Baked Apple Charlotte, Baba au Rhum, and Siberian Dumplings. The recipe for Apricot Tart is one I memorized 25 years ago and use over and over again. Anne Volikh’s Art of Russian Cuisine is no longer in print, but several libraries have it on their shelves. She also includes a page of drawings illustrating assembly of the Kulebiaka and recipes from across the huge Russian and Soviet empires. Our library has a copy of Please to the Table by Anya von Kremen that includes recipes across the fifteen former republics of the Soviet Union.