Two Girls, One Burner

We live in a tiny apartment in Brooklyn with a broken stove. The oven hasn't baked anything in six years and three burners are busted. We cook local, mostly organic, vegan meals on one burner. var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-23515367-1']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })();

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Fennel, Oranges and Olives

For years, Franny's has been serving variations on this theme: Roasted fennel with olives in garlic; lucques olives and clementine wedges topped with shaved fresh horseradish; Fennel, olives and parsley.

We keep a horseradish in the fridge and make these salads all the time, but now this trend is catching on. Because I mean, who can't make a salad of fancy olives and orange slices? Please.

At Gjelina's in Venice Beach, we had roasted fennel, orange, chili and fennel pollen salad. Others report a similar salad with shallots. The Wall Street Journal included a fennel, orange, olive salad (with watercress and avocados) in their April 25, 2013 roundup on watercress and spring superfoods. But now, Pizzeria Biga in Royal Oak, Michigan, that's right--that's right, a suburb of Motor City!--has a Orange, Olive, Parsley salad on their (gasp!) carryout menu!

We're calling it: Fennel is the new Kale.

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We have a lot of carrots from our CSA right now. So I made this soup based on the View from the Great Island blog. It's made with carrots, leeks and red lentils, spiced with mustard seed, coriander seed, tumeric and curry, blended coarsely so it's creamy but let's you crunch the coriander seeds. I took the suggestion from the original recipe, and made the frizzled brussels, too. 

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Do Chua, or pickled daikon and carrots, based on this recipe.

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Anup Joshi's Sambhar

The above photo was the goal. We were missing some key ingredients (fenugreek, urad dal, tamarind paste, yellow split peas, pretty much everything Indian) because the Compare Foods doesn't have a great section for Indian food, so we followed this recipe for the Lentil Stew and this recipe for Anup's grandmother's sambhar recipe (a fragrant seasoning combining cumin, coriander, fenugreek, coconut and red chiles). So, ours turned out a little different, but still delicious. 

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Kale Salad & Spaghetti Squash Spaghetti

Here's the deal. At our house we always have the same argument at dinner: whether the kale will be raw or cooked. We all know that raw kale salad is all the rage now, but no matter where you turn -- Northern Spy, 101 Cookbooks, Prune -- to find the most delicious of all raw kale salads, they all have the same problem: parm. 

So tonight, we fed two birds with one seed. Like the top tier kale salads, we kept the main structure: torn, massaged lacinto kale, with citrus to wilt, and a savory ingredient to cut back on the acidity of the kale and lemon. We eliminated the dairy, but we added some cooked foods to add a little salty flavor while at the same time adding heat to the raw kale cooked it a tiny bit. The result: spectacular, partially cooked, perfect kale salad. And it might even be technically Raw. 

Dressing (inspired by Suzanne Goin's Carrot Salad dressing):

Lightly toast coriander seeds in a pan on the stove. Remove from pan and crush in a bowl. In the same pan (don't wash it), saute in olive oil, slivers of one leek, and three large garlic cloves pounded in black hawaiian sea salt. Add to crushed coriander.

For salad, coarsely chop lacinto kale and massage with sea salt and juice from half a lemon. Combine kale with toasted almonds (while they're still warm), orange slices and pomegranate. Add dressing while it's still hot. 

We served the salad with spaghetti squash spaghetti with a puttanesca sauce. 

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Beets and Cauliflower with ISH

Crown Heights CSA dinner combined beets and white radish roasted in a dressing of tamari, olive oil, balsamic vinegar and mustard served over quinoa and stir-fried yellow cauliflower in olive oil.

Topped with a new jar of Premium ISH Horseradish from the Brooklyn Flea.

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Eggplant and Cauliflower Pizzas

One pizza was marinara, eggplant, and cherry tomatoes from the backyard. The other was cauliflower from the Crown Heights CSA and kale from the backyard.

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Spaghetti Squash with Swiss Chard & Black Eyed Peas

We know this photo isn't the most appetizing, but we accidentally stirred everything together before snapping the pic. Here's the deal: this is a vegan improvisation of this Martha spaghetti squash prepared with a swiss chard gratin. We roasted the spaghetti squash drizzled with olive oil for 45 minutes on 400 in the oven then scooped out the squash strands. In a separate pan, we roasted garlic and onions and black-eyed peas in olive oil and earth balance, then added the swiss chard. The result was fighting over the leftover deliciousness.

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Muesli

Boxed cereal is boring and expensive. We made muesli with bulk dried cranberries, flax seeds, pepitas, coconut flakes, pecans and rolled oats.

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Parsley Salad

A vegan adaptation of Gay Bilson's Parsley Salad from "Roast Chicken and Other Stories" by Simon Hopkinson, made with delicious Crown Heights CSA radishes and parsley, some extra virgin olive oil, sea salt, pepper, and, of course, capers. Thanks to Katie Charles and David Hendrick for continuing to reinvent this. 

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Spicy Pickled Okra

Thanks to the Homesick Texan for this.

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Purslane, Tomato Sandwiches

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Mushroom-Crusted Tofu Steak

Served on mashed potatoes with kale and garlicky boy choy, onion gravy on top.

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Cabbage Wraps with Quinoa, Potatoes and Radishes

Big Crown Heights CSA ingredient night here. Our version of P.F. Chang's tofu lettuce wraps, but with potatoes subbing for tofu, cabbage subbing for lettuce and the addition of some spicy radish and black quinoa! 

Oh yeah, we made vegan apple pie for dessert.

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Pizza!

So, a big thing you missed from the last 15 months at Two Girls is our pizza stone work. We have made one million pizzas. They're all delicious. Here are some of the best. Fennel and mushroom with red onion.

Squash blossom pizza.

Behind the squash blossom is a house favorite: red cabbage and leeks.

Here's another good one: rainbow chard and tomato, shaped like New Jersey.

A classic backyard garden tomato pie, two ways: with tomato sauce and without. House preference? Without.

Apple sage field roast sausage with summer squash in the foreground. Tomato with eggplant in the background. All backyard ingredients.

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Three Summer Salads

In front is our version of Alice Waters' Farro Tagliatelle, just behind that is a vegan version of a fried ham, jalapeno, sweet white corn and white peach salad that Palo Santo made at the Grand Army Plaza greenmarket one morning in August 2010, and in back is Crown Heights CSA watermelon with basil and balsamic.

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Scarlet Runner Bean Soup

A few things have changed since the last post. We moved, and now we have four working burners. Also, we're cooking more gluten free. It's a year and change later and now it's autumn.

We sauteed mirepoix with a few cloves of garlic in the mexican bean pot and added some Rancho Gordo Ayocote Morados that were soaking overnight.

At the end, we salted the beans and tossed in a huge hot pepper and bok choy from the Crown Heights CSA share this week.