The Wednesday Chef

Alice Waters's Swiss Chard Gratin

Drowning in greens! Send help!

Beet greens, collard greens, turnip greens, Swiss chard, they're overflowing from my fridge like some kind of sturdy green tidal wave. A long weekend in Maine and a few nights out on the town has allowed the wholesale takeover of my crisper drawers and imbued me with an increasing sense of desperate futility every time I open the fridge.

(I couldn't even depend on Ben to tackle part of the problem: on his own last night, he made pasta with tomato sauce. When I asked him if he'd had any of the vegetables, he looked up and said, "a carrot?" Clearly I have failed in my channeling of the sense of urgency.)

The other vegetables are disappearing with ease. Kohlrabi? Gone. Beets? Pickled, oh yes, and gone. Cabbage? Spicily sauteed and gone. Little white turnips? Sob, gone. (I loved those.) But the greens, dear me, the greens.

I've decided I've got to be methodical. I can't see the green pile as some kind of towering inferno. I have to tackle it leaf by leaf, drawing deep breaths. (And every once in a while, I have to be okay with throwing some of the greens in the trash. Only the wilted, browning ones! They aren't doing anyone any good, sitting there balefully, making me feel like a jerk.) And I have to get help from the professionals.

After all, who better than Alice Waters to help with getting rid of some perfectly good week-old Swiss chard?

I don't own The Art of Simple Food, but so far every recipe I've tried from it has been a bit of a knock-out. In a quiet, unassuming way, mind you. No fireworks necessarily. But I like food like that. It allows you to have a conversation while you eat, being a good hostess to the people gathered around your table, or a good dinner partner to the person sitting across from you every night. Food like that fills your belly and uses up the stuff in your kitchen, like greens gone wild and old bread and the last dregs of milk and a dusty onion, and tastes good - really good, like something your mother might have taught you to make if she was a resourceful cook with impeccable taste who grew up on a farm in France.

This gratin, while it does dirty more dishes than when I normally make chard (bang it in a pot to steam, drain it a little bit later and douse liberally with lemon juice and olive oil), is a lovely way to use up chard, stems and all. Rich and creamy without being heavy, the gratin has melting soft chard at the bottom and crispy, crunchy breadcrumbs at the top. It's the European peasant version of creamed spinach: fresher, leaner, cheaper.

If you're drowning in greens like me, for God's sake, double the amounts below and take the leftovers, if there are any, to work. And be grateful. In six months time, it'll be frozen Brussels sprouts all over again.

Chard Gratin
4 servings

1 1/2 bunches of chard
1 cup fresh breadcrumbs
2 teaspoons melted butter
2 tablespoons butter
1 onion, diced
Salt
2 teaspoons flour
1/2 cup milk
A few strokes of freshly grated nutmeg

1. Wash and stem the chard. Save half the stems and slice them thin. Bring 2 quarts of salted water to a boil and cooked the sliced stems for 2 minutes. Add the chard leaves and cook until tender, about 3 minutes. Drain and cool. Gently squeeze out the excess liquid from the stems and leaves and coarsely chop them.

2. Toss together the breadcrumbs and the melted butter. Toast on a baking sheet in a 350-degree oven, stirring now and then, until lightly brown, about 10 minutes.

3. Melt 1 1/2 tablespoons of butter over medium heat in a heavy-bottomed pan and add the diced onion. Cook over medium heat until translucent, about 5 minutes. Stir in the chard and season with salt. Cook for 3 minutes. Sprinkle with the flour and stir well. Then add the milk and nutmeg and cook for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add more milk if the mixture gets too thick. The chard should be moist but not floating in liquid. Taste and add salt if needed.

4. Butter a small baking dish. Spread the chard mixture evenly in the dish and dot with the remaining butter, cut into bits. Sprinkle the breadcrumbs evenly over the top. Bake in a 350-degree oven until the gratin is golden and bubbling, 20 to 30 minutes.

Nigel Slater's Peas with Olive Oil and Mint

Okay, brace yourselves. This one's going to be short and sweet and to the point. Because we all have something else we should be doing - making these peas. You could be wondering why, and I'll tell you. They're likely the only way I will ever cook frozen peas again.

Woah. That's a bold statement, I know. It's even making me a little nervous, to bandy about with superlative threats like that. I mean, I like a regular old boiled frozen pea, lacquered with the barest hint of unsalted butter, just fine and all. Who doesn't? In fact, up until last week, that was the only way I ever ate frozen peas. (Well, except for the time when I threw half a bag into a fake chicken tikka masala. Details, details.)

But these peas, sweetened and mellowed by a barely-stewed onion and trailing the mystical scent of mint and grassy olive oil, are enough to make me put the butter away and declare myself the president and first official member of the Peas-with-Olive-Oil-and-Mint club. Do you think I should start a themed group on Facebook? Or take out an announcement in the paper? Maybe even hire a plane to write a tribute in the sky?

I mean, seriously, where have these peas been all my life?

Not to be a total boss, but I think you should make them for dinner tonight.

Peas with Olive Oil and Mint
Serves 2 as a side dish

4 tablespoons olive oil
1 1/2 cups frozen green peas
1 small onion or shallot, sliced into paper-thin rings
2 sprigs fresh mint
Salt

1. Pour the oil into a medium saucepan and add the peas, onion slices, and mint. Add the salt and one tablespoon of water, and cover with a lid. Bring to a boil, then turn down the heat and simmer over low heat for 6 to 7 minutes. Shake the pan occasionally. Serve hot.

James Peterson's Mushrooms à la Grecque

Languorous cooking times, afternoons spent in the kitchen, and a honorary membership to the Slow Food movement may be all well and good, but give me quick, something-out-of-nothing meals that come together in less time than it takes to make a plate of pasta and I'll be seduced, every time.

Who hasn't stood in front of their fridge with the door open, stomach rumbling and hands feeling trembly with hunger, wishing that a little bewinged creature trailing pixie dust would swoop in, pluck out all the edible bits and pieces, and conjure up a quick meal in less time than it takes to say "I believe in fairies!"?

Just this past week, I have made bread in less than an hour (honest-to-God - more on that next time), fragrant lentil stew in under thirty minutes (red lentils, people, they're the ticket), and then these mushrooms - culled, nearly-forgotten, from the bottom of the fridge - in almost no time at all.

It's like I've been charmed, or something.

Lightly glazed with their own juices fortified by a splash of wine, a fillip of lemon juice, and a smattering of coriander seed, the mushrooms have a luscious, silky-firm quality that belies the speed with which they were cooked, and a hauntingly delicate flavor. The dish comes together so fast it will surprise you - you might barely have time to open your mail, grill bread and set the table.

But what a relief, then, to sit down so soon after you started, and have a meal, a good one. No bowl of cereal, no peanut butter-smeared water crackers, no desperate dialing to the mediocre take-out place. Though we ate ours plain and unadorned except for the parsley, I think a softly poached egg would be spectacular on top, the swirling yolk enriching the flavors and adding ballast to the meal.

Real fast food*, indeed.

*With thanks to NS for that one.

Mushrooms à la Grecque
Serves 4

1/2 pound small white button mushrooms
1/2 pound small cremini mushrooms
1/4 cup dry white wine
1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon coriander seeds
Salt to taste
Freshly ground pepper to taste
8 slices country white bread, for grilling (you might like brushing a peeled garlic clove ever-so-lightly over the bread)
2 teaspoons finely chopped parsley

1. Slice off and discard the mushroom stems. Rinse and drain the mushrooms. If the mushroom caps are larger than three-quarters inch in diameter, cut them in half vertically. Put the mushrooms, wine, lemon juice, olive oil, coriander seeds and one-fourth cup water in a 3 1/2 - or 4-quart pot. Cover the pot and bring to a simmer over medium heat, gently shaking the pan a few times during the first few minutes of cooking. Simmer gently, covered, for 12 minutes to cook through.

2. Using a slotted spoon, remove the mushrooms from the pot and put them into a bowl to cool. Return the mushroom liquid to a good simmer, adding any remaining liquid that the resting mushrooms have released back to the pan to reduce. Simmer until the liquid is reduced to one-fourth cup, then remove from the heat.

3. Pour the reduced liquid over the mushrooms and season with salt and pepper. Cool to room temperature. The recipe to this point can be made ahead and the mushrooms stored, refrigerated, for 1 to 2 days.

4. Heat a grill over medium heat. Grill both sides of the bread until lightly browned. Divide the mushrooms with the juices among four small bowls. Sprinkle each with fresh parsley and serve with the bread.

Gabrielle Hamilton's Chickpea Salad with Four-Minute Eggs

I don't know if it's the cold weather or the darkness or the fact that I'm feeling lazier than usual, but we have been subsisting almost entirely on pantry staples for over a week now. Normally, I go to the grocery store almost every day, just to pick up a fresh bundle of greens or a grapefruit or two, a little bit of fish or chicken, or to get quick inspiration from the aisles before I trundle home. But it's been a rough week, I guess, and I haven't had the energy or the stamina for that. So instead I'm working through the cans and sacks in the kitchen and whatever I can find in the crisper drawer or the fridge.

Nigel Slater's Real Fast Food has been helping us out nicely - I made a seriously abbreviated and yet totally delectable Chicken Tikka Masala on Wednesday that had us hunched over our plates in glee, though we ate it up so quickly I couldn't take a photo for you; and I've got big plans for a bag of frozen peas and an onion come Monday or Tuesday. (The excitement! I know, you can barely stand it.) There are other things, too - our old workhorse: pasta with tomato sauce, and our new favorite, Molly and Brandon's black beans, which has been our Saturday lunch for the past three weeks and counting.

(It's kind of amazing, all the things you can do with well-stocked cupboards and some inspiration...)

And then there is this chickpea salad, which does an amazing job of cleaning out your entire fridge (what do you mean, you don't have a bundle of parsley, a handful of green olives, a couple of eggs, and some dodgy-looking radishes hanging around like a bunch of thugs in the back? Who are you?) in addition to tasting pretty darn good, packing a nutritional punch and looking much like spring on a plate, which is a highly desirable thing in the miserable depths of winter when all you can do is think long and hard about how uncomfortably hot it will surely get, once again, just be patient, mmhm, mmhm.

You layer smashed and unsmashed chickpeas, dressed with a sharp lemon vinaigrette, with a spiky little salad of parsley leaves, quartered radishes, green olives and some scallions for good measure (though those were the one things that I didn't have, and I wasn't exactly going to go out and buy some, was I, so I did without - you can, too). Then you balance wobbly eggs cooked to molten-yolk perfection on top. With crusty bread waiting in the sidelines, you gleefully use your fork to split open the egg and watch the yolk ooze around the plate, dressing the salad with its sweet, sticky, yellow self.

It's quite a strange little meal, and I mean that in the best way possible. It's a kitchen-sink salad, and though I don't usually like kitchen-sink salads, this one's different, somewhat special, weird and funky, strange but tasty. More than anything, it's fresh. Which might seem funny considering that all of the ingredients had been knocking around my kitchen for longer than anyone would care to think, but that's the odd genius of it.

So tell me, readers: what are your favorite pantry meals? What do you cook when you just can't bear going outside to the store again and you have to make do with what you've got?

Chickpea Salad with Four-Minute Eggs
Serves 4

3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
5 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
Salt and freshly ground pepper
One 19-ounce can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
2/3 cup small green olives, pitted
10 small red radishes, quartered
2 cups flat-leaf parsley leaves
3 scallions, white and light green parts, finely chopped
4 large eggs, at room temperature

1. In a medium bowl, whisk the lemon juice with 4 tablespoons of the olive oil and season with salt and pepper. In another medium bowl, lightly crush half of the chickpeas; mix in the whole chickpeas. Add half of the vinaigrette to the chickpeas and toss. Add the olives, radishes, parsley and scallions to the rest of the vinaigrette and toss. Spoon the chickpea salad onto 4 plates and top with the parsley salad.

2. Bring a medium saucepan of water to a boil. Add the eggs and boil over moderately high heat for 4 minutes. Drain, then rinse the eggs under cool water for 1 minute. Using the back of a spoon, gently crack the eggs all over and peel the shell off.

3. Set an egg on each salad and drizzle with the remaining 1 tablespoon of olive oil. Sprinkle the salads with salt and pepper and serve immediately.

Regina Schrambling's Mushroom Ragout

For the past week, I've been elbow-deep in flour and boiling potatoes and yeast (dried, instant, fresh, you name it), trying like mad to get this potato focaccia recipe figured out for you all. And you know what? I'm totally enjoying it. It's slow-going, yes, but it's fun, too. Plus, Ben seems to enjoy all the doughy, not-salty-enough, sunken-in-the-middle test specimens. Who knows. More on this later.

In the meantime, while we all wait for my oven to finally produce The Right Version of La Focaccia, I need to quickly tell you about this mushroom ragout I made last weekend that, literally, is good enough to eat from the pan with a spoon when no one's looking. (If you want to be a little more dignified, I'd suggest you boil some rice and spoon the ragout over it. While we're at it, you could also eat this over pasta, or pan-fried chicken paillards, over steak, or straight out of the pan.)

It's so simple that I almost feel silly writing about it, but it's so darn delicious that I just have to urge you to make it. You basically saute a bunch of wild mushrooms with a few aromatics, deglaze them with stock and wine, and give the whole dish some body with a nice dollop of creme fraiche. Yeah, yeah - see what I mean? Easy-peasy and deja-vu. Except is it? Have you made this lately? Get to it.

Russ (because of course it's his recipe) Regina (sorry!) calls for wild mushrooms, but after getting slightly worked up about the state of even the standard Portobello caps at my local grocer (seriously, I'm thinking of lodging a formal complaint with the manager there about the piles of rotting vegetables I see on a regular basis - I mean, I don't want to be shrill, but come on. I should take pictures of the place and show them to you - it's appalling.), I marched off to the organic grocer and ended up with plain old champignons de Paris, little cremini (yes, I know they're the same thing), and shiitake mushrooms.

I also used less butter and less creme fraiche than the original recipe because it's January and I'm just not in the mood for gilding lilies. The dish turns out fabulously nevertheless - the mushrooms are each napped in a lovely little cloak of winey, brothy, herb-scented cream without being bogged down with fat, and their woodsy flavor shines right through.

And for those of you who can't get your hands on creme fraiche in the grocery store? Make your own instead of substituting sour cream or whatever else - creme fraiche has its own lovely flavor profile and reacts uniquely with heat, which is why cooking with it is such a pleasure. Plus, making your own is beyond easy. Here's what you do:

Pour 2 tablespoons of buttermilk and 2 cups heavy cream (do not use the ultra-pasteurized, additive-filled kind or this won't work) into a clean glass jar. Screw the lid shut and let stand at room temperature (between 65 and 75 degrees) for 8 to 24 hours, or until thickened. Stir and refrigerate at least 24 hours before using (this helps to continue thickening the cream). It will keep for about 2 weeks in the refrigerator.

Mushroom Ragout
Serves 4

1 1/2 pounds mixed mushrooms (I used white button, little cremini, and shiitake mushrooms)
2 tablespoons butter
2 leeks, white part only, thinly sliced (about 1 cup)
1/4 teaspoon coarse sea salt, plus more to taste
1 sprig fresh thyme
1 bay leaf
Pinch of cayenne pepper
1/4 cup dry white wine
1/2 cup stock (chicken or vegetable)
1/4 cup creme fraiche (plus a little more if desired)
Freshly ground black pepper to taste

1. Clean the mushrooms and cut them into chunks of roughly even size.

2. Melt the butter in a large shallow saucepan over medium heat. Add the leeks, sprinkle with salt and cook, stirring often, until softened, 5 to 8 minutes.

3. Add the mushrooms and stir to mix well. Add the thyme, bay leaf and cayenne pepper and mix well. Add the wine and cook, stirring, until the liquid is reduced to a glaze.

4. Add the stock and bring to a simmer. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the mushrooms are tender, about 15 minutes (cooking time will depend on variety and age of mushrooms).

5. Stir in the creme fraiche and heat through. (Add more if you want more liquid.) Taste and add more salt if needed. Season well with pepper and serve.

Amanda Hesser's Beet Salad with Horseradish and Fried Capers

Close to six months of eating beets on a nigh-weekly basis will have you praising the heavens when the harvest season is over and you can finally go back to your supermarket ways, trolling the aisles for slim little green beans and heavy-stemmed broccoli, slinky sacks of frozen baby peas and the occasional lacy frond of kale. I love my CSA, I do, but its limitations are often evident; hard medicine to swallow for this seasonal evangelist. Still, relief from the never-ending supply of beets was much needed around here.

So it felt supremely odd, I tell you, to be in the grocery store the other day, picking out a nice little bundle of nothing other than beets. In fact, I'd say it felt much like a cosmic joke. Oh, bloggy blog, the things I do for you...

Truth is, I quite like beets, and miraculously, I've convinced Ben that they're pretty good things to eat, too. He used to think they tasted like sweat (his words, not mine), but not anymore. I take full credit for that, of course. Small victories must be celebrated, wouldn't you agree? But I've grown tired of my usual treatment (lots and lots of vinegar, a drizzle of olive oil, Maldon salt and perhaps some dried savory). And I've never really fallen in love with the whole toasted-walnut, slivered-blue-cheese-or-perhaps-feta thing that seems to be a staple now on so many restaurant menus. (I sort of wonder if beets get such a bad rap because of the things they're often combined with...but that's a discussion for another time.)

This recipe, which I plucked out of the pile back in 2004, offers a slightly different twist. You roast your beets, of course, and cut them into wedges, but then you dress them with a creamy dressing made of mustard, white-wine vinegar, horseradish, olive oil, and a little spoonful of sour cream. The dressing is, without the sour cream, quite something - an aggressive sauce that threatens to overpower the sweet little beet. But the sour cream rounds it out; gives the dressing some finesse - a calming hand, if you will. The beets, tossed in the stuff, turn an absolutely lurid shade of pink - no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get the real color to come through in the pictures. Trust me, it was downright silly.

But the flavor? Far from it. A Franco-Russian collaboration, if you will, by way of the Mediterranean: this dish simply sings. It's got spunk and elegance and textural depth. Those fried capers are fussy, yes, but they provide a welcome saline crunch against the silky, creamy beets. Between Ben and I, this dish that supposedly serves four was gone in an instant - nothing left but a hot pink smear.

****

I was stuck home yesterday, sick with a cold and a pernicious sore throat and a teeny case of self-pity, when I got word that I'd been nominated for a Food Blog Award for Best Writing. Readers, seriously? I'm just speechless. And thrilled. Red-faced with bliss, if you're wondering. If you'd like to vote for me, click on this link  - you've got until the end of this Friday for your vote to be counted. Thank you!

Beet Salad with Horseradish and Fried Capers
Serves 4

1 1/2 pounds small beets, trimmed and scrubbed
1/4 cup olive oil, plus more for beets and frying capers
2 tablespoons salt-packed or brined capers
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
1 1/2 tablespoons horseradish, more to taste
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
1 tablespoon sour cream
Sea salt to taste
1 clove garlic, crushed (I'd do without this next time)

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place beets on half of a large piece of aluminum foil. Drizzle with a tablespoon of olive oil. Fold the foil and seal the edges. Lay package on a baking sheet and place it in the oven. Roast until beets are tender, 45 to 60 minutes. (Test by poking a fork through the foil into a beet.) Remove from the oven. Be careful when opening the foil; steam will race out. While still warm, peel beets, then slice into wedges and place in a bowl.

2. Soak salt-packed capers for 10 minutes, drain, rinse, then pat dry. (If using brined capers, drain and pat dry.) Pour 1/2 inch olive oil into a small saucepan over medium-high heat. When oil is hot enough to toast a bread crumb in 30 seconds, add capers. Be careful; oil may sputter. Fry until capers fluff and begin to brown on edges, 30 to 60 seconds. Drain on paper towels.

3. In a small bowl, whisk together mustard, horseradish and vinegar. Whisk in 1/4 cup oil, followed by sour cream. Pour half the dressing over beets; mix. Taste, adding more dressing or salt, if needed. Rub a platter with crushed garlic, then spoon on beets and sprinkle with fried capers.

Irene Kuo's Stir-Fried Celery in Meat Sauce

I never met a vegetable I didn't like. Zucchini, with its sweet, creamy flesh; swiss chard, thick and papery to start, then soulfully silky to finish; kohlrabi, with its refreshing, vegetal snap; eggplant, spongy in one moment, melting the next. Green beans and Brussels sprouts, cauliflower and broccoletti, artichokes and spinach - I love them all, truly madly deeply.

But there is one little exception to the rule that I must confess doesn't exactly knock my socks off. In fact, I usually find it downright disappointing. Perhaps because my first encounters with it were when it appeared, chopped up fine, in alarmingly mushy tuna-fish sandwiches (the filling mashed down wetly into a hot dog bun, of all things), or as a stubby little vehicle for palate-gumming peanut butter at my elementary school cafeteria. When I learned to cook, the only time I ever came in contact with celery was in the base for meat sauce and I quickly learned that leaving it out rarely, if ever, harmed the sauce at all.

There's just something so strange and awkward about celery, isn't there? Its stalks flail about like a gangly boy's legs. I never seem able to finish a bunch of it before it goes all limp and wobbly in the fridge. And the taste, well, it's never been something I've craved. But after the spate of baking I did over the past few weeks and a run of days in which turkey, stuffing and more turkey featured largely in our daily meals, I took one look at my recipe clippings last night and plucked this one straight from the top.

If anyone could get me to like celery well enough to make it my entire meal, I figured, the Chinese could.

First, I had to wrestle my way through the thicket of celery lying on my counter. And you know what I found out? Peeling celery, folks, must be right up there with training fleas as one of the jobs I'd least like to have on this Earth. But I soldiered through, convinced that celery nirvana awaited me on the other side of that swiftly growing pile of slimy, stringy peels lying in my sink.

A quick plunge into the hot, oily depths of my frying pan softened up the celery before it got tossed with a smashed garlic clove, a smattering of minced ginger, ground pork, and the pungent combination of chili sauce and soy sauce (my nostrils are still smarting). I gave the pan a good toss (there is something so satisfying about lifting a pan off the stove and shaking it so hard that everything flies up in the air and neatly falls back down again, just where it should, isn't there?) and then put the lid on to steam the celery into submission. White rice cooked away, plainly, on the stove.

As I waited for the celery to finish, I stood back and contemplated my apartment. It smelled like a Chinese restaurant. That in theory is better than in real life, truth be told. A few minutes later, I turned off the heat and stirred toasted sesame oil into the panful of pork and celery, fragrant and spicy. Then I stabbed around in the pan with a fork and brought a forkful to my lips.

And holy God, was it ever salty. And spicy. But mostly salty. And actually a whole lot spicy. Salty, spicy, salty, spicy, help, help, help - oh wait, what about that white rice? Man, it was like a cooling balm, that good white starch. The first bowl I ate had me mostly in pain with all that spice and salt. But then I found myself hankering after a second bowl, which was tastier and calmer than the first. I have a feeling this stuff will really shine tomorrow, after an overnight rest. The celery was muted, tamed - its stringiness gone, but its assertive crunch still there and its bold, grassy flavor tempered by all that heat, oil, and salt.

I'm still not sure I'll ever really love celery, but this brought me a whole lot closer to liking it.

Stir-Fried Celery in Meat Sauce
Serves 3 to 4

1 large bunch celery
1 tablespoon soy sauce
2 tablespoons sriracha or other hot chili sauce
1 tablespoon dry sherry
¼ teaspoon sugar
¼ cup canola or peanut oil
¼ teaspoon salt
1 large clove garlic, peeled and lightly crushed
2 teaspoons minced ginger
¼ pound ground pork
½ cup chicken stock
1 teaspoon sesame oil

1. Using a peeler, remove the strings from the outer layer of the celery stalks. Trim the leaves, then slice the stalks into ¼ -by-1 ½ -inch sticks. (You should have about 4 cups.)

2. In a small bowl, combine the soy sauce, chili sauce, sherry and sugar.

3. Heat a wok or a large, heavy skillet fitted with a lid over high heat. Add 2 tablespoons of the oil. Add the celery and stir a few times; then add the salt and cook for 1 minute. Transfer the celery to a dish; clean and dry the wok.

4. Reheat the pan and add the remaining 2 tablespoons of oil. After about 30 seconds, add the garlic clove, flipping a few times; then add the ginger and the pork, stirring to break up the lumps. Stir in the soy-sauce mixture. Return the celery to the pan and toss. Add the chicken stock, cover and reduce the heat to medium-low. Steam to reduce the liquid, about 2 minutes.

5. Remove the lid, increase the heat to high and stir until the liquid has evaporated. Add the sesame oil and toss well. Discard the garlic clove.

Regina Schrambling's Collard Squares

I don't know if it's the midweek blues or the threat of rain or just a cyclical thing that happens every now and again, but I've come down with a small case of blogger's block and while I know that there is nothing so uninteresting as listening to someone complain about the fact that they have nothing to write about, I figure we're all friends here and you won't really hold it against me. Will you?

Because, yeah, unless you want to hear me waffle about whether or not I'm contributing as much to my Roth IRA as I am to my winter shoe collection, or moan about how much it is irritating me that we seem to have some kind of mold situation in our bathroom (why, oh, why do domestic irritants have to exist?), or complain that I have been trying for a month to get a pedicure but cannot, for the life of me, seem to find the time to let someone else paint my toenails while I read a trashy magazine and just. let. go. for one blessed hour, well, then I'm not sure I've got much to offer today.

So before I bore us all to tears, I'll just quickly tell you about the one thing of interest I have to contribute today: the humble collard square. This agreeably chunky little thing really is worth mentioning, even amidst all the bellyaching, because it's just so unassuming and yet so delicious, too. There's not much to the preparation, but what you end up with is sort of a lightened, modern, crustless quiche, heavy on the vegetables and big on taste. I used a little less cheese than Regina calls for, and lessened the oven time a bit for a somewhat more tender and moist result. We ate our collard squares with a few roasted tomatoes alongside, which really was an inspired match (something about greens with tomatoes just makes my heart sing), and found it difficult to leave any leftovers.

The original recipe (for 12!) can be found here, the one below is amended for a smaller crowd. And with that I'm off to contemplate my navel. (To think that a day ago I was actually considering NaBloPoMo again. Ha!)

Collard Squares
Serves 3-4

1 large bunch collard greens
1/4 teaspoon hot pepper flakes
Salt
1 tablespoons butter plus extra for the baking dish
1 small onion, finely diced
1 clove garlic, minced
1/4 pound shiitakes, stems removed, caps finely diced
1/2 teaspoon tamari or soy sauce
4 large eggs
2 ounces Comté or Gruyère cheese, grated
1/4 cup fine dry bread crumbs

1. Remove the tough stems from the greens and wash the leaves well in several changes of cold water. Place them in a large pot and add the hot pepper flakes and 1/2 teaspoon salt. Add water to cover by several inches and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to a simmer and cook, uncovered, until the greens are very tender, about 1 hour. Drain well and cool slightly, then squeeze dry and finely chop.

2. While the collards are cooking, melt the butter in a small or medium sauté pan over medium heat. Add the onion and garlic, sprinkle lightly with one-fourth teaspoon salt and cook, stirring, for 5 minutes. Add the shiitakes and the tamari and sauté until they are tender, about 5-7 minutes. Remove from the heat and cool slightly.

3. Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Butter a 9-by-9-inch baking dish.

4. Combine the collards and shiitakes in a bowl. Add the eggs, cheese and bread crumbs and mix well. Spread into the prepared pan. Bake 20 minutes. Cut into squares to serve hot or at room temperature.

Deborah Schneider's Rajas con Crema

Some switch seems to have been flipped since I spent a few days in Mexico. Previously, I merely tolerated heat and hot peppers, craved them rarely - perhaps in the odd hot & sour soup or the bimonthly curry over on Lexington and 28th. I've never owned a bottle of hot sauce or spent time dreaming about making my own harissa. My father's the heat nut in the family, eating spicy food until he starts to sweat, shaking Korean pepper over his dinner plate every night. I've always preferred a milder meal.

But now? I seem to have been bitten by the same bug. It's all I can think about: how to make my dinner as hot as I can possibly take it. My pantry isn't up to snuff, though, with cayenne and a few dried chiles de arbol being the only sources of true heat in our home. That hasn't stopped me - I've been spicing up everything from pureed squash to collard greens like I'm making up for lost time. Which, I suppose, I am. Tingling lips, a runny nose, the flush of heat that starts around your jawline and works its way upward (or is it the other way around?), I love it all and I want more.

On the advice of the Internets and a commenter, we went to Taqueria Coatzingo in Jackson Heights for lunch on Saturday and I was actually pretty disappointed. Perhaps we didn't order well, but my two carne asada tacos were sort of limp and flabby and overfilled. Ben's enchiladas verdes looked just like they have in every other New York Mexican restaurant we've been to: pallid and oily and absolutely nothing special. But that's okay - I'm now even more motivated to just figure out Mexican food for myself at home.

Luckily, last week my CSA obliged, providing me with my first four poblano chiles. At home, I put them under the broiler and watched carefully as the dark green skin raised and blistered, turning black and wrinkly and fragrant. Working quickly, I deseeded the peppers (I didn't think I'd need gloves, after all, poblanos are really quite mild, but there was still some stinging, so I rubbed my hands with a cut lemon and that seemed to take care of things, even later when I had to remove my contacts) and cut them into strips.

The peppers weren't slick and oily like the roasted bell peppers that I've grown up making. They were drier and firmer, had more structure. Following a recipe in this charming cookbook, I cooked the poblano strips with onions until they were fragrant, then doused the pan with a bit of milk and turned the heat down low. The vegetables mellowed and softened even more and started picking up a deliciously brown coating from the evaporating milk.

A spoonful or two of creme fraiche swirled in at the end barely coated the peppers and onions with a thin, creamy film. The recipe says that you can eat these with scrambled eggs or in a taco, along with some other suggestions, but I found them so irresistible that I simply plopped a tangle of them on my plate along with a dollop of pureed squash (a Kabocha, roasted until dry and soft, then pureed with salt and more creme fraiche. I let the oven get a little too hot, so it burned in places and actually tasted sweet and caramelly next to the peppers).

Eaten in the office, with my feet propped up on the desk, looking out the window at the black and starry Queens night, I felt like I literally tasted my world expanding. And not to get too serious on you here, but this is really one of the reasons why I love food and cooking so much: a whole other world, a whole new culture opens up to you once you start exploring its culinary traditions. I don't know much about Mexico and I'm so impatient to get back there and learn more, but in the meantime, I'm going to get acquainted the easiest way I know how, through the recipes and stories I'll find in my kitchen. I can scarcely contain my excitement when I start thinking about the discoveries.

Oh, and I should let you know, since I started this post out on such a hot and spicy kick, this dish really is pretty mild, almost even soothing. Every now and again, you'll get a bite that warms the inside of your mouth, but on the whole this is a pretty easygoing dish. Just so you know. I'm sure I'll try to make this again and eat it with eggs or tortillas, but I'm not promising I'll be able to restrain myself from just eating them plain right then and there.

And now I'm off to daydream about hot sauces and dried chiles, cayenne and Aleppo pepper, capsaicin and the Scoville heat scale. My father will be so proud.

Rajas con Crema
Serves 4

4 fresh poblano chiles
1/2 white onion
2 tablespoons butter
1/4 cup milk
Kosher salt
1 tablespoon Mexican crema or creme fraiche
2 epazote leaves, chopped (optional)

1. Char the chiles over a gas flame or on a very hot grill until blackened. While still hot, wrap in paper towels to steam and cool. Remove the stem and seeds and rub off all the blackened skin and clinging seeds with the edge of a spoon or the paper towels. (Don't wash them; much of the flavor goes down the drain.) Don't worry if a little skin remains. If you want a milder taste, remove the ribs inside the chiles. Cut into lengthwise strips 3/4 inch wide.

2. Cut the onion into thin strips, from the stem to root instead of across (they hold their shape better this way).

3. Melt the butter over medium-low heat in a heavy frying pan and cook the onion and peppers together for 5 minutes, stirring often.

4. When the onion is softened, pour the milk over the vegetables and cook very slowly until it is evaporated. Season with salt to taste. (Can be made head to this point and refrigerated; reheat before serving.)

5. Just before serving, stir in the crema or creme fraiche and epazote, if using. Serve hot.

Molly Wizenberg's Slow-Roasted Tomatoes

Would you like to know how you, too, can eat 13 plum tomatoes in one sitting, aided only by a second dining companion who, let's be honest here, never actually gets his fair share because you are far too busy eating the tomatoes all by your greedy, greedy self? (Try to be gracious, really, and let the poor man stab a few onto his fork. He's had a long day.)

You take the plum tomatoes, you halve them, you sprinkle them with a wee bit of salt and ground coriander and then you let them go in the oven until they're shriveled and wrinkly and fragrant, and oozing oil and juices. If you're patient and easily distracted by television or books or good conversation, then do these the way Molly tells you to: in a low oven for close to 6 hours.

If you're anything like me, impatient, and positively bewitched by a roasting tomato (oh, I'm hopeless - by any tomato at all, really), make the oven hotter and then chain yourself to a sturdy piece of furniture for two hours, because otherwise you'll be absolutely compelled to continuously wrenching open the oven door in despair because it's not time to take the tomatoes out yet, but you're starving and they're gorgeous and that smell! God help me, I can't wait any longer.

The tomatoes on the edge of the pan get sort of barely leathery and the ends are faintly crisped and charred. The tomato taste is so concentrated that it almost turns into something else. These are the ones to be lifted off the pan with quick fingers, they're hothothot, and popped into your mouth while the table's being set. The tomatoes in the middle of the pan are thicker and filled with a delectable slurry of juice and oil. These are the ones to pile on a piece of good country bread along with a judicious drizzle of oil.

Of course, you could also plop them on your plate alongside whatever you're having for dinner or chop them up and toss them with freshly cooked pasta or stick them in a sandwich, even. With good manners and restraint, you could even store these in the fridge for a while. But I'll bet that most of them just get speared by your fork and popped in your mouth right then and there, hot out of the oven, and before anyone else gets wise and comes along to share in the bounty.

They taste best this way, I think.

Slow-Roasted Tomatoes

Ripe tomatoes, preferably Roma
Olive oil
Sea salt
Ground coriander

1. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Fahrenheit. (If you're feeling impatient, preheat the oven to 300 degrees Fahrenheit.)

2. Wash the tomatoes, cut off the stem end, and halve them lengthwise. Pour a bit of olive oil into a small bowl, dip a pastry brush into it, and brush the tomato halves lightly with oil. Place them, skin side down, on a large baking sheet. Sprinkle them with sea salt and ground coriander—about a pinch of each for every four to six tomato halves.

3. Bake the tomatoes until they shrink to about 1/3 of their original size but are still soft and juicy, 4 to 6 hours (at 300 degrees Fahrenheit, these are ready after 2 hours). Remove the baking sheet from the oven, and allow the tomatoes to cool to room temperature. Place them in an airtight container, and store them in the refrigerator.