Roasted Cauliflower with Red Onion-Yogurt Sauce

It makes no sense to start a post about cauliflower with a public service announcement about plums. That said, I happened to pick up a bag of methly plums at the market a couple weeks ago; they were juicy and wet, sold as seconds because they were...on the verge. They were begging to be mushed with some sugar and made into jam. So I did it. And friends, that jam is so good, so utterly addictive, that I'm rather heartbroken methly plums are now out of season here. With that, the PSA: if methlys are still growing where you are, get a bag. Combine them with some sugar, some lemon juice, and some ground ginger, or better yet, some ground galangal. Cook until bubbly but still runny. Jar. Smear some on toast with a bit of fresh cheese. Summer has never, ever, tasted this good.

The dish I'm actually here to share with you won't win any awards for the summeriest dish around, but it's landed on our table four times in the past month, including twice for company. It's the thing Adi eats the most of right now - she can't seem to get enough cauliflower in the belly. And three of our guests have asked for the recipe, confirming that this is good enough to last beyond our family cauli kick.

The florets are blasted in a super-hot oven for a surprisingly long time. You'd think they come out total mush, but instead, they come out browned in spots, very crispy, and fully cooked but still with bite.

But the real magic is the sauce: a beautiful, pink-hued yogurt blended with sauteed, caramel-edged red onions. The onions get soft enough to disappear completely into the yogurt, lending a sweet-savory depth that goes ridiculously well with singed cauliflower. Vinegar-soaked raisins and some mint leaves round out the salad. I can't get enough of it; none of us can, really.

I'm always looking for dishes that work well together as part of a menu, and last night's meal pretty much hit the jackpot for me as far as menus that fit in my schedule without requiring too many concessions or short cuts, so I thought I'd share it. We had rosé night with our wine club, and I made dishes whose flavors I thought would complement rosés. I got some planning help from my buddies Jennifer Hess and Mike Dietsch, via twitter, so they deserve some credit for pulling this dinner party together. The menu was as follows:

• Chilled curried summer squash soup, adapted from Saveur
• Molasses-roasted salmon, roasted in the morning and chilled served cold
• Tomato salad with spiced brown butter, inspired by this recipe (soon on the blog!)
• Pissaladiere, made in advance and reheated in a warm oven before serving
• Cauliflower with red onion yogurt sauce (recipe below), roasted in advance; served at room temperature
• Peach crisp (adapted from this recipe)
• Vanilla ice cream

This is a menu that I can see reusing in the future. Except for the salmon, which I assembled before lunch, I made pretty much everything during Adi's two-hour nap. The only a-la-minute prep required was to assemble the cauliflower salad, reheat the (baked, pre-sliced) pissaladiere, and dress the tomatoes. I felt less in the weeds as a host than I have in eons. That's what summer's all about.

Roasted Cauliflower with Red Onion-Yogurt Sauce

As you can see in the photos above, I tossed some zucchini coins in with the cauliflower. Highly recommend.

Serves 4 as a side

1 large head of cauliflower
4 tablespoons olive oil, divided salt and pepper
1 small or 1/2 a large red onion, cut into a large dice
Juice of 1 lemon Turkish or other fragrant dried red chile, to taste
1 cup Greek yogurt
1/4 cup red raisins or currants
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
a sprig of mint

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.

Cut the cauliflower into roughly 1-inch florets. Spread in a single layer on a rimmed 13x17 baking sheet; drizzle with 2 tablespoons of the olive oil, and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Roast, turning florets halfway through baking, until browned on both sides and cooked through but not mushy. For me, this takes about 45 minutes. Remove from the oven and set aside.

Meanwhile, add remaining 2 tablespoons of olive oil to a small saucepan and set over medium heat. When oil shimmers, add diced onion and a couple pinches of salt and pepper. Stir to coat in the oil, then cover saucepan and cook for about 10-15 minutes, stirring occasionally, until onions are mostly translucent but caramelized around the edges and very fragrant. Unlike caramelized onions, which are made over a low, slow burner, these are cooked over higher heat, resulting in a translucent onion with slightly browned/frizzled edges. If your heat is lower or your onions are taking longer to soften and cook, don't rush them; they're the basis of the yogurt sauce, so you really want to coax as much flavor out of them as possible.

Set onions aside to cool for 5-10 minutes, then add to a blender with any residual oil, and the yogurt, lemon juice, a pinch each of salt and pepper, and a pinch of the red chile. Blend, first on low, then on high; add water by the tablespoon if your blender is struggling to catch. When mixture is smooth, stop the blender and taste; add more salt, pepper, chile, or lemon as needed.

To serve, plate cauliflower on a shallow platter. Sprinkle currants/raisins evenly over the dish. Drizzle yogurt sauce over cauliflower, and finish with a few strewn mint leaves. Serve with extra yogurt sauce on the side.

How to Summer

I know, I've disappeared lately. We've been summering. I don't have a full post for you today, because doing summer properly in Washington involves lots of time away from Washington: we spent a weekend up in PA, where I snapped the above photo of the team roaming through a lavender field. This is the right answer.

When we are in town, we spend Sundays in a hot kitchen with jars of tomato on the counter and glasses fogged from the steam. Morning canning projects are followed by languid afternoons on the porch, and evenings comforted by a glass (alright, two) of Amaro Lucano where I almost pick up the camera to snap a photo of the roasted cauliflower before it's devoured, but then I remember the languid part and I don't get up, and the cauliflower gets polished off, escaping any photographic proof that it existed. We feel full. And tipsy from the amaro. We go nowhere, we do nothing. We summer.

But I assure you, things are getting made. Bellies are getting filled. Of note:

DSC_0871

The tomates farcies from David Tanis via NYT look amazing. I bookmarked them immediately after he published them, intending to make them for the weekend. But the weekend rolled around, and when I lazily googled "tomatoes farcies," only to be sent to a much meatier recipe from 1981. I didn't notice that it was the wrong link; I just forged ahead with the new recipe, swapping out pork for cured beef sausage and skipping the cheese. The results were positively divine. Three of us polished off the lot of them one Saturday, after discovering - whoops, summer! - that I'd left them in the oven the previous evening, an entire dish of my Friday night dinner unserved, unmissed, unnecessary. (I am becoming my mother.) Make both.

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The tomato bread soup from the Franny's cookbook continues the streak of A-grade soups from the Franny's folks. (You can find the recipe here.) I hesitate to slap the word "sludge" on anything I intend to encourage you to make, but heck: it's a sludge, the best, summeriest sludge ever.

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If you can get your hands on methly plums - those small, fragrant dark-ruby plums with equally red centers - try your hand at a conserve with either ground ginger or, even better, galangal. I lucked out on about 5 pounds of second methlys from Toigo, a favorite farmer, last weekend. I followed Cathy's template for plum jam, and ended up with hands down the best jam I've made all summer - maybe ever. GO.

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Adi loves nectarines like her mama. We're not big peach people: fuzz ruins the the experience. But we (sans Adi) did very much enjoy a gin-based cocktail with muddled peaches, basil, and some demerara sugar. Sub mint if that''s your thing.

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I've always been partial to basil pesto over the parsley variety, but this summer, I've found multiple uses for a punched-up pesto with both herbs. I've been using a bit of shallot, some green garlic, equal parts parsley and basil, lots of lemon zest, and some very fragrant Turkish chile, pounding everything together in a mortar and pestle with plenty of olive oil.

I've twice found myself ten minutes before serving dinner and at a loss for an appetizer. The solution, both times, has been a simple cucumber-avocado soup. There are manyrecipes for this, but I've ridden bareback: 2 small cucumbers (I like the thin-skinned Persian ones), 1 avocado, juice of a lemon or lime, a slice of jalapeno, salt and pepper to taste. Whir that blender and pour into small bowls. This makes four small bowls. You can add cilantro, mint, or chives if you'd like.

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Mark my words, I will tell you about that cauliflower. Soon, I hope.

Happy summer, friends.

Mushroom and Kale Breakfast Strata

Turns out, unsettling from the old place was much harder than settling into the new place. Luisa told me that I shouldn’t worry if, for weeks after the move, I still wondered when we’d finally go back home. That’s just what I expected to feel. But those final weeks pre-move were so stressful and sleepless and unsettling that by the time we unpacked everything, the place already had started to feel like ours.

It helps that 24 hours after move-in, we were fully unpacked. That’s my leading lady: she’s extremely efficient, she hates transitions, she wants it donedonedone. So it was.  By Sunday morning, I was back to weighing coffee beans, pouring the slow stream of hot water over my filter, setting my favorite mug on the counter. And exactly one week after that, with both my brother and old friends in town, we managed to host some folks for brunch.

Save for a few old jars and nubbins of past-prime vegetables, the contents of our fridge made the move with us. Among the contents: half a stale baguette, most of a bunch of kale, and the end of a log of goat cheese. This is practically the holy trinity of strata, so strata it was. It's simple, really: stale bread, some sauteed vegetables. A not-very-large quantity of milk, a not-very-small quantity of heavy cream. Layer; bake. Poof: the house smells like home.

And speaking of recipes that bring us home, I need to tell you about a book.

My friend Jess, she of the wonderful blog Sweet Amandine, has written a book (!!) about her brain aneurysm, and also, food. A confusing combination, no? But it works. Oh, does it work.

When Jess was 28, an aneurysm ruptured in her brain. The recovery was slow and uneven. To regain a sense of normalcy - and to fill the long days - Jess started baking. Stir is the story of the recipes that helped her heal.

In college, Jess was the awesome senior who ran the a cappella choir, lurking in my social periphery. We reconnected over our blogs, though - and one day, in Boston for business with a morning to myself, I hopped over to her place for brunch. Jess was one month into motherhood, an impossibly tiny Mia bundled in the stroller she pushed on our walk. We picked up bread from High Rise Bakery - a corn flour loaf, I think - and back home, she cooked me what to this day are the most perfect sunny-side-up eggs I've ever had. While she made the eggs, Jess put me to work grinding beans for my coffee. She's a tea person, but she still managed to have the world's coolest Hario grinder and Chemex carafe. I learned about both from her. I also heard more about why she'd started the blog in the first place.

Jess has quite a story to tell, and she tells it perfectly. (Frankly, she could write about wallpaper, and you'd still want to read more.) She also shares recipes at the end of each chapter, and having tested several of them, I can tell you that they, alone, are worth the price of the book. Apricots with cardamom and pistachios? Yes. My favorite Jess recipe, ever. Folded slow-rise challah? Feathery and brioche-like. You want it. An almond cake requiring one bowl, one pan, and lots of self control? Friday night dinner just got fancy.

Jess is baaacckkk. Go read her book. Make her apricots; serve them for brunch, with this strata, or just eat them straight out of the fridge. Toast your health and hers. Congrats, dear Jess!

Mushroom and Kale Breakfast StrataAdapted, just slightly, from Merrill Stubbs, of Food52

This is almost exactly Merrill's strata formula, minus sausage plus mushrooms. I did reduce the amount of pecorino, since I find it easily overpowers other flavors. I swapped out gruyere in favor of goat cheese, too. Merrill recommends assembling the strata 6 hours before serving, to let the bread fully soak up the liquid. I didn't do this - not everyone plans brunch in advance! - and the strata came out great anyway.

1 tablespoon olive oil 1 tablespoon butter 1 sweet white or yellow onion, diced 8 oz. mixed mushrooms (I used a mix of cremini and shiitake), wiped clean and sliced 1/2 teaspoon salt 1 large bunch kale (I prefer dino, the kind with the bumpy dark green leaves), stems removed, washed, dried, and chopped 6 eggs 1 1/2 cups whole milk 1/4 cup heavy cream 1 tablespoon smooth dijon mustard 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg (freshly ground if possible) a few grinds of black pepper 7 cups cubed stale bread 5 oz. goat cheese, crumbled 1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese 1/4 cup grated pecorino cheese

Butter a 9x13-inch baking dish and set aside. If serving the strata immediately (see headnote), preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Heat olive oil and butter in a large, shallow sauté pan over medium heat. Add onion, and sauté until soft and fragrant, about 5 minutes. Add mushrooms and salt and increase heat to medium-high. Sauté, stirring occasionally, until onions and mushrooms have softened and some have turned golden, 5-7 minutes. Add kale, reduce heat to medium, and cook until kale has wilted, about 3 minutes more. Remove from heat and set aside.

In a large bowl, whisk together the eggs, milk, cream, mustard, nutmeg, and pepper until fully combined. To assemble the strata, spread half of the cubed bread into the bottom of the prepared baking dish. Top with half the greens, half the egg mixture, and half of each of the cheeses. Repeat with the remaining bread, greens, and egg mixture; sprinkle the remaining half of each of the cheeses over the top of the strata. At this point, either bake the strata immediately, or set in the fridge for up to 6 hours to set.

Bake strata for 35-45 minutes, until the top is golden brown and the middle is set (check with a toothpick). Let cool for 5 minutes before serving.

Barley Porridge with Orange and Black Sesame

This was the big weekend, the one where home changed locations.

I keep trying to remember the day we moved out of our first apartment in this city, into a slightly larger, slightly quieter one four doors up the block. I can picture the movers -- one in particular, who carried a very tall bookshelf on his back around three flights of curved stairs like it was a pocketbook. I remember our first night in the new place, marveling at how much of a difference four doors west could make for the noise level. Everything was so...quiet. But before I picture all of this, my mind skips two steps backward, to the day I moved us into that first apartment, on the corner of a quiet street and a busy one. The apartment with the big bay window, the Formica counters, the incredibly-hip and not-totally-practical lofted bedroom, the wall I insisted on painting pink. Move-in day was just me - D was still in Michigan - and a pile of cheap furniture I'd found on Craigslist. One of the two front doors was stuck shut, so I spent the bulk of the day jamming the legs of various tables in the small front opening, then around and around that three-flight twisted staircase.

That was eight years ago. Since then, we've accumulated five more bottles of bitters (current favorites: Fee Brothers black walnut; Jack Rudy aromatic), and a pantry full of last year's preserves threatening to take away my canner for the season if I don't use them up soon. And of course, now we've got our daughter, too. She comes with her own accumulation: books and toys and tall stacks of hand-me-downs that could last beyond her first birthday. There certainly was more to pack and move this time around, which caused several nights of sleeplessness, 24 hours of mild turmoil, and lingering fatigue. But even more daunting than the actual move is the prospect of trying to hold onto memories from three homes. I don't want to lose any of it.

Our kitchen has been dark for much of the past month, save for a couple meals over father's day and a last-hoorah birthday dinner for our friend Jana. But before we shut down operations entirely, I cooked a batch of porridge from Ottolenghi's newest book, Plenty More, for breakfasts.

In a week full of transitions, that porridge was the perfect thing. Comforting and familiar, like a good bowl of oatmeal. Fresh and intriguing, from fragrant marinated orange segments and a pile of sugary, crunchy sesame seeds. The new and the old, together. That is how we will proceed.

Barley Porridge with Orange and Black Sesame Adapted from Ottolenghi's new cookbook, Plenty More Serves 4

I find constant inspiration from Ottolenghi's recipes - his celebration of vegetables, his bold embrace of meatless feasts. That said, his recipes are extraordinarily fussy, and -- at least for me -- not always in ways that improve the result. I've simplified his instructions liberally, so that something as homey as porridge can stay that way. If you want to make the original, get the cookbook. It's worth it.

For the porridge:
1 tablespoon mixed black and white sesame seeds
2 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon muscovado sugar, divided
125 grams (scant cup) whole or pearled barley, covered with cold water and soaked overnight
750 ml (3 cups plus 2 tablespoons) whole milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
Zest of 1/2 a lemon Zest of an orange
Salt
20g tahini

For the orange topping:
1 orange
1/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup water
1/4 teaspoon orange blossom water

Prepare orange topping: Peel off a strip of orange rind and add to a small saucepan. Next, supreme the orange, transferring both the segments and the resulting juice drippings into a bowl as you work. Set aside.

Add sugar and water to the pan with the strip of zest. Bring to a boil, stirring regularly, and cook until sugar has dissolved, about 3 minutes. Set aside to cool; then add orange blossom water and reserved orange segments and juice.

Make porridge: Drain and rinse the barley. Tip it into a medium saucepan with the remaining 2 tablespoons muscovado sugar, milk, citrus zest, and a three-finger pinch of salt. Bring to a boil, then turn the heat to medium-low and simmer for an hour, stirring occasionally, until the barley is cooked but still has some bite: if it's becomes very thick, add a little water towards the end.

Make sesame topping: Toast sesame seeds by shaking them around in a small, dry pan over medium heat until fragrant, about 3 minutes. Combine seeds and 1 teaspoon of muscovado sugar in a mortar, and crush lightly. Set aside.

Serve: Stir vanilla into porridge, then leave to cool for five minutes. Divide between four bowls. Dribble a teaspoon of tahini over each portion, spoon the orange segments and syrup, and sprinkle with sesame topping.