Susie Bright’s Slow-Roasted Tomato Sauce – With Notes on Charring

Ingredients for roasted tomato sauce in pan cut up tomatoes red bell peppers garlic onions
(Recipe after jump — with notes on charring)

It’s dry-farmed tomato season, which means I’m making big batches of Susie Bright’s roasted tomato sauce. This recipe is amazingly delicious and ridiculously easy — about 10-20 minutes of prep depending on how much you’re making, plus blending at the end. And it freezes really well, so whenever it’s tomato season, we make giant batches of it and freeze it for the winter.

You know that children’s book, Frederic, about the mouse who sits around in the summer gathering words and colors and sun rays to store up for the winter? That’s what this sauce feels like. When winter comes, and it’s been gray and cold and wet for days on end, we stick some tomato sauce in the microwave and put it on pasta, and it feels like pulling a bit of stored summer out of the freezer. And when the sauce is roasting, it fills the house with this ambrosial tomato perfume. We mostly make this to freeze, but we can never resist eating some of it right away, warm out of the oven.

I got the recipe from Susie Bright, and have adapted it over the years. Here’s my version.

Continue reading “Susie Bright’s Slow-Roasted Tomato Sauce – With Notes on Charring”

Susie Bright’s Slow-Roasted Tomato Sauce – With Notes on Charring
{advertisement}

What Is Healthy Food?

Picnic basket on a dock

(Content note: food, passing mentions of disordered eating, depression, vomiting, trauma)

What does it mean to “eat healthy”? Let’s narrow this down a bit.

What’s healthy food for someone with a wasting disease? What’s healthy food for someone with a history of disordered eating? What’s healthy for a marathon runner? A gymnast? A weightlifter? A couch potato who bikes on weekends?

What does it mean for a fifteen-year-old to eat healthy? How about a seventy-year-old? A five-year old? What’s healthy for a five-year-old who’s a super picky eater, even compared to other five-year-olds? What’s healthy for someone with morning sickness? Pregnancy cravings? Hyperemesis gravidarum (persistent severe vomiting during pregnancy)?

What’s healthy for a supertaster? A vegan? An autistic person, or someone with other sensory sensitivities? Someone with food allergies? Someone with a limited food budget? Someone who just doesn’t like vegetables no matter how they’re cooked? What’s healthy for someone in California, who has year-round access to fresh local produce? For someone in Chicago, who abso-fucking-lutely doesn’t have that? What’s healthy for someone in Bangkok? Havana? Paris? Memphis?

What’s healthy eating for someone with a history of food-related trauma? What’s healthy for someone who has strong cultural connections with the food they eat — connections that help them survive and flourish? What’s healthy for someone who’s finally giving up on dieting and is working to love their body the way it is? What’s healthy for someone with depression, for whom food is their only reliable source of pleasure? Or for someone with depression who struggles to eat at all?

Please. For the love of fuck. For the love of all that is beautiful in this world. Please, PLEASE, stop talking about “healthy food” as if it were a generic concept. Please stop talking about “healthy food” as if it meant the same thing for everyone.

There are only a handful of behaviors that are broadly healthy for most people. Eat some fruits and vegetables; move your body; drink water; don’t smoke; get a decent amount of sleep. And even these don’t all apply to absolutely everyone. See above.

If you want to “eat healthier,” think about what that might mean for you. Maybe question some unexamined biases you might have — about the supposed connection between weight and health*, for instance, or the assumptions we make about health and social class. Think about what health means for you. Do what works for you. And please, please, shut the hell up about the rest of us. Thanks.

 

*I urge you to listen to the Maintenance Phase podcast, or read “You Just Need to Lose Weight” and 19 Other Myths About Fat People by Aubrey Gordon.

What Is Healthy Food?

Pizza Beans, Simplified

(Recipe below the jump.)

I am so excited about Pizza Beans! I just made them for the first time, and now I want them in our freezer always. They’re easy, hearty, delicious, and super-vegetal. They freeze really well. And it’s a very adaptable recipe.

I got the recipe from Smitten Kitchen. But it looked a little more complicated than it needed to be — until I realized that three-quarters of the recipe was “make a tomato sauce with vegetables.” We already have tomato sauce. We always have tomato sauce. Every summer I make and freeze enormous batches of tomato sauce, like Frederick the mouse gathering sun rays for the winter. Any recipe that starts with making a tomato sauce can be immediately short-cut.

So I thought: How can I simplify this?

Here is my simplified version of Pizza Beans. I realize that “simplified” may not mean the same to everyone as it does to me. For me, “simplifying” a recipe means “taking the numbers out and highlighting all the flexible parts that can be easily changed.” If you prefer recipes with numbers and specific ingredients, check out the Smitten Kitchen version — or just Google “pizza beans,” there’s lots of variations.

Continue reading “Pizza Beans, Simplified”

Pizza Beans, Simplified

No-Numbers Chili

Pot of chili

I’ve been on an extended hiatus from writing. I’m getting ready to start again, so I’m dipping my toe back in the water with something easy and fun — recipes.

I love this recipe. It has no numbers in it — at all. No quantities, no temperatures, no cooking times.

For cooks who prefer more guidance in their recipes, I promise I’ll have those later. But I know some cooks will love the flexibility of this one.

The most important part of this recipe is the variety of peppers. Get as many kinds of fresh peppers as you can manage. If you don’t know which peppers are which, it’s pretty easy to look up. Get a variety of heat levels — some sweet, some medium, some hot. Don’t overdo it on the hot ones: a little goes a long way.

And I’m not kidding about gloves. WEAR GLOVES when chopping the peppers. I speak from sad experience. Recipe after the jump. Continue reading “No-Numbers Chili”

No-Numbers Chili

Variations on Chocolate Pie

chocolate pies

I’m committing to blogging every weekday in January: sometimes about big important topics, sometimes about small everyday ones. Today I’m blogging about chocolate pie.

Every year, usually during the holidays, people write or comment to tell me they’re making my chocolate pie. I can’t argue: my chocolate pie is ridiculously delicious and ridiculously easy. This holiday season, I did some new variations on the classic recipe. One of the nicer things about this recipe is that it’s easy to adjust for extra flavorings: the unbaked filling is yummy, you can eat it with a spoon if you don’t mind a bit of raw egg, so you can just keep tasting it until the pepper or cardamom or whatever is to your taste. (The basic recipe is at the end of this post: you can also find it here.)

rosmarinus-officinalis-botanical-drawing-by-francisco-manuel-blanco
Rosemary Almond Chocolate Pie. This was a big risk — I wasn’t at all sure how it would turn out, and it’s not adjustable the way the other variants are — but it’s been a big hit. The flavors are unexpected but delicious, and the rosemary makes it both sophisticated and Christmassy. (I don’t know why I think of rosemary as Christmassy, it grows like a weed in our backyard year-round, but there you have it.) Continue reading “Variations on Chocolate Pie”

Variations on Chocolate Pie

Taco Trucks, and Making America Great

In response to the dreaded spectre of taco trucks on every corner, Ingrid and I did our part this weekend, and visited one of our many local taco trucks. Hashtags: #ImWithTacos #TacoTrucksOnEveryCorner

Streatfood taco truck with Greta and Ingrid

Streatfood taco truck

Of course, there are other possibilities. There could be ramen trucks on every corner.

Streatfood ramen truck
Continue reading “Taco Trucks, and Making America Great”

Taco Trucks, and Making America Great

Frivolous Friday: A Big Pot of Mac and Cheese with Butternut Squash

many cheeses

A few weeks ago on Frivolous Friday, I posted about cooking up big pots of things and freezing them into little Tupperwares, as an efficient way to cook at home for one or two people. I promised recipes: here is one, with our modifications, mostly in the direction of making it easier.

We start with this recipe from Epicurious. A few modifications:

For this recipe, there is absolutely no reason to bake your own butternut squash. Frozen is fine. I’m a big fan of cooking fresh things, but I’m also a big fan of making things easy when the hard way doesn’t really add anything. In this case, frozen butternut squash is 100% fine: it’s not the dominant flavor, and it’s just going to get mixed up into the sauce so texture is a non-issue. And using frozen cuts a BIG chunk of time and hassle from the recipe. Microwave it so it’s warm when you mix it into the sauce.

In the Epicurious recipe, the proportions of sauce to pasta are WAAAAAAY off. The first time we made it, we ended up with cheesy soup with some pasta in it. The second time around, we doubled the amount of pasta, and it worked perfectly. (Actually, we doubled the recipe and quadrupled the pasta. When we make big pots of things, we do not kid around.)

The crispy Parmesan wheels are nice, and they’re not difficult to make, but they’re not necessary. Ditto the fried sage leaves, although we do still use chopped-up fresh sage. If you’re going to do just one of these, I’d suggest the fried sage leaves, since it’s nice to start the roux with sage-y butter. It’s also nice to grate a little Parm on top when you’re serving it, if you feel like it. Because cheese!

On the advice of the (we think) dyke at Rainbow Grocery, who was obsessed with mac and cheese and spent lots of time talking with us about it, we added Brie and Tallegio to the sauce. It was a nice flourish: it made it very creamy, and the Tallegio gave it a nice little bite. (The recipe can be a little unctuous, and the bite helps.) You don’t need much Tallegio or Brie, just enough to make it creamy and a little tangy without being too rich. Another bitey soft cheese would also work: we used Tallegio because it was on sale, and also the dyke at Rainbow Grocery recommended it, and she was cute and nice and seemed like she knew what she was talking about. Cheap Brie is fine: you’re not putting it on crackers and serving it to the Queen, you’re melting it into mac and cheese. We also substituted Gruyere for some of the Swiss. Yes, that meant we used five cheeses: Fontina, Swiss (Emmentaler, actually), Gruyere, Tallegio, and Brie. Six if you count the Parmesan. What’s your point? (This recipe calls for Fontina and Swiss as the bsae, which work well for us — but if you have cheeses you prefer for mac and cheese, go for it. It’s also fine to just use Fontina and Swiss: we did that the first time, and it was perfectly lovely.)

We’ve found that this recipe is well-served by including chopped-up green veggies of some kind. It makes it more vegetal and vegetally-varied, turns it into more of a full meal in one bowl, and again cuts into the rich unctuousness, which is delish but can be a little much. We’re still working out how to best do that: roasted asparagus worked well, blanched asparagus worked okay but got a little mushy on being re-heated. We’re also going to try peas, and probably cut-up leafy greens of some sort. (If you try this and it turns out well, let us know what you did!)

We added powdered mustard as well as cayenne, which also adds some bite, and apparently also helps melted cheese stay smooth and melty.

We really like a half-and-half mix of white pasta and whole wheat pasta. And we like penne, as it stands up well to being frozen and re-heated.

If you try this out with your own variants, let us know how it goes!

Frivolous Fridays are the Orbit bloggers’ excuse to post about fun things we care about that may not have serious implications for atheism or social justice. Any day is a good day to write about whatever the heck we’re interested in (hey, we put “culture” in our tagline for a reason), but we sometimes have a hard time giving ourselves permission to do that. This is our way of encouraging each other to take a break from serious topics and have some fun. Check out what some of the other Orbiters are doing!

Frivolous Friday: A Big Pot of Mac and Cheese with Butternut Squash

Susie Bright’s Ridiculously Easy, Amazingly Delicious Roasted Tomato Sauce (Repost)

Ingredients for roasted tomato sauce tomatoes red bell peppers garlic onions fresh basil fresh oregano

It’s tomato season, which means I’m making big batches of Susie Bright’s roasted tomato sauce. This recipe is amazingly delicious and ridiculously easy (about 10-15 minutes of prep depending on how much you’re making, plus blending at the end). And it freezes really well, so whenever it’s tomato season, we make giant batches of it and freeze it in Tupperwares for the winter. You know that children’s book, Frederic, about the mouse who sits around in the summer gathering words and colors and sun rays to store up for the winter? That’s what making this sauce feels like. When winter comes, and it’s been gray and cold and wet and dark for days on end, we stick some of this sauce in the microwave and put it on pasta, and it feels like pulling a bit of stored summer out of the freezer. And when we’re making it, it fills the house with this ambrosial tomato perfume. We mostly make this to freeze for the winter, but we can never resist eating some of it right away, warm out of the oven.

I want Susie to get the traffic, so I’m not going to repeat the basic recipe here — you have to go to her blog to get it. But I have a few modifications and finer points, and those I’ll tell you about. Continue reading “Susie Bright’s Ridiculously Easy, Amazingly Delicious Roasted Tomato Sauce (Repost)”

Susie Bright’s Ridiculously Easy, Amazingly Delicious Roasted Tomato Sauce (Repost)

Frivolous Friday: Big Pots Of Things, Frozen Into Little Tupperwares

roasting pan with tomatoes peppers onions and garlic

If you live alone or in a two-person household, the cost-benefit analysis of cooking at home can be challenging. Eating convenience food or takeout/ delivery every night can be expensive and not that good for you. But it can be hard to find the time and energy to cook a whole meal every night. That can be true for anyone, regardless of your household size — but when I was living alone, I always found it extra-hard to be motivated to cook, and it’s almost as hard with just two people.

There’s a trick Ingrid and I have been doing for several years now. It’s not like we made it up, a lot of people do this, but it took me a while to figure out, so I’m sharing it here.

We make giant pots of food, divvy it up into single- or double-serving Tupperwares, and freeze them.

You get the convenience of pre-packaged meals or takeout, with the cheapness and deliciousness and healthiness of home-cooked food. You get the pleasure of cooking at home, without the hassle of doing it every single freaking night. Plus you get to make your food exactly the way you want it. Want Old Bay in the split pea soup? Want lentil soup with stock from the Christmas roast? Going low-fat, low-carb, low-salt? Obsessed with cardamom and are putting it in everything? Knock yourself out!

To do this you need: Continue reading “Frivolous Friday: Big Pots Of Things, Frozen Into Little Tupperwares”

Frivolous Friday: Big Pots Of Things, Frozen Into Little Tupperwares

Frivolous Friday: Kale Salad That’s Actually Good

Dino kale in bunch

The trick is to massage the HELL out of it. You’re basically cooking it, only with citric acid instead of heat. Think of it as kale ceviche.

Kale salad is very trendy, or it was until ten minutes ago (Brussels sprouts seem to have taken its place). I’ve seen it on many a restaurant menu. And I’ve inevitably been disappointed when I order it — because nobody makes it as well as Ingrid.

Ingrid will tell you that I am not a fan of the dark leafy greens: I don’t like chard, mustard greens, collard greens, any of that (although I am fond of a spinach salad). But I not only eat kale salad — I enjoy it. I mean, yes, you have to put a bunch of crap in it, you have to fill it up with cheese and dried fruit and fresh fruit and nuts and seeds before I’ll say “Yes, that sounds delicious” — but do all that, and I will happily put it in my face.

There’s a trick to it, though. Here’s the recipe we’ve been using, given to us by our friend Lori. Serves two if it’s your dinner-in-one-bowl, more if it’s a side dish. Continue reading “Frivolous Friday: Kale Salad That’s Actually Good”

Frivolous Friday: Kale Salad That’s Actually Good