An Effing Foodie

Rainy Day, Sunny Dal: Red Coconut Lentil Recipe

In starving grad student times, dirt-cheap Indian dinners on East 6th St were a welcome break in a routine of ramen and grilled cheese.  For $8-10 a head, my comrades and I basked in the nuclear glow of a bazillion Christmas lights and winking Mylar garlands, sharing lamb korma, palak paneer, steamy basmati biryani, and mounds of naan.  Nothing like a caddy of chutney to make a lady feel festive and fed.

In the course of these budget feasts, the little aluminum dishes of complimentary turmeric-touched cabbage and lentils inevitably fell by the wayside.  But I've always loved them, and consistently ended each dinner with a portion of rice draped in canary-yellow lentil gravy.

I've discovered embarrassingly recently (like, last week) that the ubiquitous dal is dead-easy to replicate at home. Thrifty-and-filling, delicious-and-nutritious, simultaneously bone-sticking and sunny, dal's an ideal balm on a rainy spring day.

And unlike their pulse/legume cousin, the bean, lentils/dal need no soaking or long-minded prep, and can be ready in 30 minutes.  Procrastinators, gather ye lentils while ye may!

This bowl of saffron feel-goods has little to do with anything traditionally Indian; it's a grab-bag of things I happened to have in the pantry, and it produced a generous pot that ensured a week of dal-on-rice, dal-as-soup, dal-with-random kale, with even enough for a quart of frozen emergency dal. 

(Just in case there is an immediate and overwhelming need for something creamy, spicy-savory, and punchy carmine.)  

Foodie Funderwear: Rainbow Chard

I'm a proponent of the Rocketship Underpants philosophy.  One may have to acquiesce to adult responsibilities--work-casual doldrums, eating fiber, going to the gym, commuting with the desperate undead.

But no one can control your underpants.  Your pink and yellow polka-dot bra?  That's YOURS, and nary a soul knows you're wearin' it.  It's not for seduction, or exhibitionism; it's just there to remind you that there is private joy in the world.

I feel much the same way about rainbow chard. 

There are fewer vegetal images as effusive as chard in its multi-hued, full-frondal form, and it's hard not to do a little dance when encountering its deeply dappled, water-beaded glory in the produce section.

But like the rocketship underwear, it's a strangely private pleasure. 

When I'm at the market, or doing prep in kitchen, more often than not I'm alone.  And once it's cooked, the pebbly emerald leaves, ruby veins, and crisp, canary stalks subdue into Depression Era sepia tones.

By the time you've set down a tasty and nutritious meal, you're the only one who knows how much prettier it was raw.

No matter! Slurp up that chiffonade beauty, and rock them neon knickers.  Some things you owe to yourself.

I Spy: Beet Carpaccio mit Smoked Ricotta @ Back Forty, East Village, NYC

...more precisely, Roasted Red Beets with House-Smoked Ricotta, Blood Orange Supremes, Shaved Fennel and Sunchoke Chips.

<crunch, crunch>
SSFL: Sunchoke chips taste like taro chips.
EF: My mom loves those! 
SSFL: I do, too!  I pick 'em out of the bag of mixed Terra Chips.
EF: (crying laughing) It's the first thing my mom does.

I'm a late-blooming beet-eater, but this salad/app provided sorely-needed sunshine to the eyeballs and winter-weary taste buds; sweet, fork-tender ruby roots with spikes of citrus, anise, crispy-salty-earth kicks from the chips and wisps of smoke from that creamy ricotta.

Beets, beets! DotDEEdootdeeDOO, sheeboom-sheeboomboom.

Biscuit Like a Snow Hill: egg restaurant, Williamsburg, Brooklyn

Brunch is one of those great love-hate relationships in New York.  On the one hand, what's not to love about eggs and booze? 

On the other hand, what's to love about long waits, no space to sneeze or seize, and dead-inside, hungover servers who drew the short straw?

Tricky, tricky.  But this last Sunday, Soft-Spoken Feisty Lady and myself were wandering about Williamsburg (destination: Artists & Fleas), and we did a lap around egg (diminutive case theirs), debating if we wanted to deal with the coiling line of people waiting to be nourished.

Well...why not?  When in Rome...wait as the Romans wait.  We put our name on the list and tuckered into the garage-ish waiting alcove.

The round of people we were waiting with were a well-coiffed bunch of quitters, so in 30 minutes, SSFL and I found ourselves seated on an aisle cafe table, sipping Mimosas ($7, the grapefruit one's a great change of pace) and eagerly awaiting eggs.

egg's Country Ham Biscuit ($8) has been on my to-do list of eating for years now, but never, ever finding myself in 'billysburg, it had become something like a bruncher's White Whale.  I may have danced a little dance when said whale hit the table:

Well, hullooooo.

That's a two-handed, feather-light work of fall-apart biscuit magic, layered with deeply savory (read: salty, but not too salty) Kentucky country ham, sharply creamy Grafton Cheddar and housemade fig preserves.

Feisty Lady and I were hard-pressed to choose a second candidate for a plate-swap, but we ran with the Eggs Rothko ($8.50), AKA Eggs-in-a-Frame of Amy's flaky brioche, blanketed with more Grafton Cheddar and paired with broiled tomatoes and candied bacon ($3.50):

Yep, you heard me right.  Bacon candy, baby.  It's less baroque than it sounds; a couple of the softer strips were not unlike mapled pancake neighbors, but there were one or two bronzed crispy critters that hit the candied mark.

I usually don't see what the big deal is with brioche, but this slice ate like a croissant, an ideal candidate for egg-and-cheese impregnation (made only better by spicy green sauce).  We liked the cheesy grits, but felt like they would have been better with the addition of a side of sauteed kale, broiled tomatoes, or a soft-cooked egg.

Funny, the difference a minute makes; like most bloggers, I tend to take pics as soon as the server walks away, without a flash and as quickly as possible, so the food doesn't get cold.  No sooner did I plop the camera back in my purse and raise knife and fork, a minor disaster struck.