The Inadvertent Gardener

Gardeners, plant and nature lovers can join in Green Thumb Sunday every week. Visit As the Garden Grows for more information.

This week, I’m kicking off a monthly series, The Edible Movie: food-centric movies I think are worth your time to watch. Some of the movies I’ll choose will, no doubt, be more mainstream—there are some I can’t help but recommend, even if they were fairly big blockbusters. But there are tons of movies out there that probably escape the radar of the general population, and I’d love to shine some light on those smaller movies that I found deliciously entertaining.

Today, I’d like to draw your attention to Toast, a biopic that covers British food writer Nigel Slater’s childhood and adolescence. I watched it with my parents at Christmas, and we picked it based on a trailer that made it look like an uproarious romp.

Sometimes, trailers lie.

While there are laugh-out-loud moments in this movie, there are at least as many, if not more, where it will squeeze your heart—Nigel Slater didn’t have a sugarplum childhood. I hate spoilers, so I’ll leave the story shrouded in mystery, but suffice it to say, there were many scenes that left me ever-so-grateful for the many hours I have spent cooking alongside my parents in the kitchen, and for the fact that I grew up in a household that embraced and celebrated food in a healthy way (most of the time).

That’s not to say it’s a bleak film—not in the slightest. In fact, it’s in many ways a celebration of the powerful influence food has on our lives and our relationships. As a person who grew up with family dinners most nights of the week, it reminded me how very important those dinners are, and how valuable they are, both for family conversation, and for the food shared amongst the group. There are parts of this movie where that is utterly absent, and the void left is one that is utterly tangible and raw.

As I was working on this post, I found this interview with Nigel Slater after he spent time on the movie’s set. I must caution you: the interview and associated article definitely contain spoilers, so don’t click through unless you want to know more. But when you’ve seen the film, come back here so you can read the interview. It’s enlightening, and interesting, to hear someone talk about seeing themselves and their life reproduced on screen.

Toast has a running time of 96 minutes.

Gardeners, plant and nature lovers can join in Green Thumb Sunday every week. Visit As the Garden Grows for more information.

The Unicorn has lots of lovable qualities, but among them is this: He is a fantastic giver of gifts.

He is not a fan of the gift list—he’d much rather pay attention to the recipient, think hard about something they would love to have but would never buy for themselves, and then give them that. I don’t know many people who operate like this, and it’s pretty spectacular to be on the receiving end.

This year, that meant he gave me a controller that turns my slow cooker into a sous-vide machine, along with some other accessories perfect for making the sous-vide process easier. Not only would I not have bought one of these, I didn’t even know it existed. How The Unicorn found the dude in Canada who makes these things, I do not know, but he made it happen.

Of course, as I am wont to do, this meant that I let my excitement about my new toy get the better of me. I planned out four recipes, all vegetable-based, to start with in the cooker. None of them required long cooking times, but they did require the water to stay at a pretty hefty temperature.

I could not get the water to stay at that temperature on the first try. I should also mention that the first try lasted about ten hours, while I became more and more freaked out about the amount of raw ingredients I’d just bought for these dishes and how they were going to go to waste. Let it not be said I can’t turn what starts as a fun cooking day into something akin to a panic attack. I have mad skills in this area, folks. Mad skills.

One of the dishes I was going to make was a fingerling potato salad, and when it became obvious that the sous-vide solution was not forthcoming that evening, I varied the recipe to use the oven instead of the slow cooker. The result was outstanding: a bacony, rich dish that rides the line between German potato salad and the American rendition.

Even if it meant I didn’t get to use The Unicorn’s gift for this dish, it yielded a recipe I’ll return to. I hope you will try it, and return to it yourself.

Roasted Fingerling Potato Salad
(Serves 8-10)

3 pounds fingerling potatoes, cleaned and skins left on
2 TBSP olive oil
1 TBSP salt
¼ pound bacon, diced
2 carrots, diced
3 shallots, diced
2 garlic cloves, diced
1 celery stalk, diced
¼ c. homemade mayonnaise (To make this, I recommend following the directions located here, but substitute red wine vinegar for the lemon juice, and leave out the garlic and basil.)
2 TBSP apple cider vinegar
2 TBSP Dijon mustard
2 TBSP chopped parsley
1 TBSP chopped tarragon

1. Boil the potatoes in heavily salted water until they are just starting to get tender. Meanwhile, preheat your oven to 450 degrees.
2. Drain the potatoes and let them cool a bit. At this point, if you have a lot of variation in size, cut the larger ones in half, then toss the whole batch into a roasting pan. Drizzle with the olive oil, then toss with the salt. Roast in the oven for about 25-30 minutes, or until the potato skins are crisping and starting to brown.
3. While the potatoes are roasting, saute the bacon in a pan over medium heat until it begins to crisp and the fat begins to render. Add the carrots, garlic, shallots and celery to the pan and cook approximately five minutes, or until the shallots and garlic become soft.
4. Remove the potatoes from the oven and place them in a large bowl. Add the onion-garlic-bacon mixture and mix.
5. In a separate bowl, mix the mayonnaise, vinegar and mustard. Pour that mixture on top of the potato mixture and mix well. Sprinkle the herbs on top and serve immediately.

Gardeners, plant and nature lovers can join in Green Thumb Sunday every week. Visit As the Garden Grows for more information.

So, I have come to the point where I can’t tell any more stories without introducing you, Good People of the Internet, to someone new.

To be fair, he’s not so new to me (though he makes every day feel new, which is, perhaps, better than his actually being new). But until now (admittedly because I haven’t been blogging much…), I’ve managed to keep him under wraps.

Now, however, I’m getting to the part where he’s going to come up in conversation.

He and I talked about this, the issue of how he might appear on the blog, back in April. “At some point, I’m going to have to write about you,” I said. “There’s no way you can’t be part of the story.”

“That’s fine,” he said. “Just don’t use my real name.”

(“He’s a smart man,” said my father, when I told him about this exchange.)

“What do you want to be called?” I asked. “You don’t have to answer right away.”

“You can call me whatever you want,” he said.

So I thought about it, and I thought about a conversation I’d had with a friend shortly after he and I decided to call what we had together something more, well, perennial.

She and I were headed into the city to meet him and some other friends for karaoke. While we rode BART, I told her how I’d never dated anyone who matched me so well, who shared so many of my interests, who challenged me so thoroughly, and who could not only keep up with me, but might very well be able to outpace me, if given a chance.

“It’s a miracle,” she said. “You’ve found a unicorn!”

“Yes,” I said. “I have found a unicorn.”

And then, about an hour later, when he got up and started singing karaoke and revealed his amazing voice, she turned to me, wide-eyed and said, “MOTORCYCLE-RIDING UNICORN.”

So, readers of mine, consider yourself introduced to the newest character in this tale of food and things that grow from the dirt, this man who has utterly stolen my heart, and who will show up in the very next story I tell: The Unicorn.

Gardeners, plant and nature lovers can join in Green Thumb Sunday every week. Visit As the Garden Grows for more information.

This week, I succumbed in a big way to my annual pomegranate binge. I can’t get enough of the tangy, juicy seeds, which are only in season for the next month or two.

I mostly throw them into salads, but I have been known to stand at the kitchen counter, storage container of harvested seeds in one hand, spoon in the other, and just shovel them straight into my mouth. It’s not every day that one has the opportunity to take an action that is simultaneously so decadent…and so healthy.

For lunch today, for example, I tossed a couple of handfuls of baby spinach leaves with garbanzos I’d cooked earlier in the week, leftover roast chicken, and a shocking number of pomegranate seeds. I drizzled sherry vinegar and really good olive oil over the top, hit the mixture with some sea salt, and even eating at my desk felt extravagant. Every single bite included at least one pomegranate seed, and it was delicious.

Pomegranates can be intimidating. I hadn’t tried to open one before moving to California, but this fruit can totally be conquered. I’ll direct you over to a post I wrote this week for BlogHer, which features not only links to some great, photo-heavy tutorials, and some solid recipe links, too.

The time is short, folks. Get your pomegranate on before the season ends!

Gardeners, plant and nature lovers can join in Green Thumb Sunday every week. Visit As the Garden Grows for more information.

I have a love-not-love relationship with soup. Sometimes I would be happy to eat it for days in a row, and sometimes I have no patience for it. Soup, after all, can’t really be eaten quickly. The spoon is a finite vessel: It holds what it holds, and forces the eater to go bite by bite, thoughtfully. Eat too fast, and you’re guaranteed to either splash the soup everywhere or burn your mouth, or both.

I’ll admit that I’ve gotten close to the bottom of many a bowl of soup, have looked around to make sure no one was watching me, then picked it up and slammed it back as if it were a cafe au lait. This is not how I would recommend eating soup, unless, of course, you’re comfortable with the recrimination of your Internal Etiquette Monitor. Ladies don’t drink their soup straight from the bowl.

But when I can muster the patience, and can find within myself the discipline to eat at a more graceful speed than usual, I love soup. Whether it’s turkey soup inspired by my Dad’s recipe, or an easy lentil number, or homemade caldo verde, it’s comforting, and a canvas for so many combinations of delicious and interesting ingredients.

As you probably know from reading this blog, I have a great aversion to out-of-season tomatoes. And though, every year, I get the idea that I’m going to want to can tomatoes, I never get around to it when they’re in season. This year, in particular, that was a hopeless cause—I was so busy I barely even got to the farmer’s market during tomato season. So a few weeks ago, I indulged in a shipment from Happy Girl Kitchen out here in California—several jars of canned heirloom tomatoes and dry-farmed tomatoes that I planned to use for something amazing in the tomato off-season.

I decided, in the midst of a stressful pre-holiday week, that some of those tomatoes were destined for homemade tomato soup. Comforting, bright, and, in my case, a little bit creamy, they would be the perfect burst of Vitamin C and A, served up in a warm and soothing package. Plus, it was a stretch in which I desperately needed to slow down and eat something at the pace it required—see all the above about eating too fast And no patience for soup… Would this option serve as aspoonful of medicine? Yes, but not the kind that requires sugar to go down.

I had some leftover half-and-half on hand from another cooking project, so I stirred some into the soup at serving time, but I know we’re reaching the end of The Season of Excess, and you may be looking for something more ascetic to add to your diet. If so, let me assure you that this would be just fine without any dairy. If you’re in need of a little winter solace, pair it with a grilled cheese, but it’s just as lovely paired with a thick slice of whole grain bread from your local bakery and a salad on the side.

Wintertime Homemade Tomato Soup

(Serves 6-8)

2 TBSP butter
1 TBSP olive oil
1 onion, chopped
1 large carrot, diced
48 oz. canned crushed or diced tomatoes (if you can get local ones, do it. Otherwise, I swear by Muir Glen’s products)
32 oz. chicken or vegetable stock, preferably homemade
1 TBSP chopped fresh thyme
Salt and pepper to taste
(Optional) Half-and-half or heavy cream

1. Heat a cast-iron dutch oven over medium-high heat. When the pan’s hot, add the butter and olive oil and let sizzle until the butter has melted.
2. Add the onion and carrot and saute for about five minutes, until the onion is very soft.
3. Add a hefty pinch of salt to the onion-carrot mix, then the thyme, and stir to combine.
4. Add the tomatoes (including their juice) and the stock, and stir to combine. Bring the mixture to a strong simmer, and keep it there for about 20 minutes. Taste, and adjust seasonings as needed.
5. Puree with an immersion blender. You can also puree it in a regular blender, but you’ll need to do it in parts, and be very careful not to burn yourself with hot soup!
6. Serve immediately. If you want to add half-and-half or heavy cream, you can do so directly to each serving.

Here are some additional tomato soup recipes worth checking out:

• My Tomato Soup Revelation from Gastronomie
• Punt! Homemade Tomato Soup from The Practical Cook
• Homemade Tomato Soup—In Just 20 Minutes! from Saucy Girl’s Kitchen
• Homemade Tomato Soup from Local Lemons