Last Night’s Dinner
1. Pita bread
(variant on a recipe in the Laurel’s Kitchen Bread Book, where they refer to it as “pocket bread”): A packet of yeast dissolved in half a cup of warm water, added to three cups white flour, three cups whole wheat flour, two teaspoons salt and two teaspoons diastatic malt powder (which I get from the King Arthur Flour shop in Vermont), then inundated with over two more cups of water, a quarter-cup of sesame oil and a spoon or two of honey. (The honey and the sheer amount of oil is the distinction of the Laurel’s Kitchen recipe.)
Dough rises for ninety minutes or so, then gets punched down and rises another forty-five minutes, then gets pulled into over a dozen pieces to rise separately for ten minutes or so. You’ve got to roll them out quickly and cleanly to ovals of between six- and ten-inch across.
Some recipes suggest just chucking them on the bottom of the oven or right on the racks, but I’ve performed that little comedy routine to the point where it’s no longer funny—I use the same cast-iron pan I make pizza in, oiled a little.
My problem with pita, I now realize, has always been in the baking, not the dough-making. My oven (which, I assure you, is not your oven, being small and quirky and Sears-cheap, but still bears a lot in common with other ovens) has to be broiler-hot and you can’t peek for at least five minutes. You also have to put in just a few—four, say—at a time. You also have to sacrifice the first batch to test the heat and timing, so it’s probably a good idea to make that a small batch, though I always forget to.
2. A very quick soup: one can diced tomatoes, a teaspoon of curry powder.
3. Avocado Hummus
(from Linda McCartney’s World of Vegetarian Cooking, with tiny variations. My wife makes fun of me for regularly referring to Linda McCartney by her maiden name, Linda Eastman, which I always do when I don’t think twice to correct myself. But I was the kind of ‘60s rock baby boomer who was aware of her as a photographer before she became a Beatle wife, and it stuck. This cookbook was a wedding gift to us from another Beatlefan, Hank Hoffman.)
A cup of drained cooked chickpeas are mashed in a bowl along with a tablespoon of tahini, one lemon-full of lemon juice, a quarter cup of plain yogurt (we make our own, which I guess is a cooking blog for another time), three tablespoons of olive oil, one crushed clove of garlic, two ripe avocados, salt and pepper and parsley. All whipped to within an inch of its green blobby life with my ever-handy Cuisinart Smart Stick. (A Father’s Day gift. Then, when I wore that one out, a birthday gift.)
It’s really good just like that, but when I had it for leftovers for lunch today I was inspired to add some of the diced tomato/curry soup to it and it was even better.
4. (I actually made a whole other hummus as well, a roasted red pepper one, but writing about it now just seems piggy so I’ll pretend I didn’t make it after all.)
5. Cabot Three-Year Extra Sharp Cheddar Cheese. I have it on good authority (a woman giving out free Cabot samples at a county fair) that this is the sharpest of the famed Vermont-based Cabot cheeses. I am also partial to Cabot’s Hunter’s Seriously Sharp and Racer’s Edge varieties (especially their names, which conjure up images of hunters with sharp spears prowling the woods for milk-laden cows, and of NASCAR drivers trying to wolf down crumbly cheese sandwiches whilst they zip around the track.
6. Slices of carrot, red pepper, mushrooms and onions for dipping or making into sandwiches with the pita and hummus.
7. Homegrown sprouts of speltberries and mung beans. (A surefire kitchen science project for kids that actually has some benefits afterwards as food—something you can’t say for cornstarch clay.)
8. A package of Yves’ Veggie Cuisine brand Meatless Deli Ham—protein for my daughters, who still fear hummus.’
9. Basmati rice. We eat a lot of brown rice around here, but I just like how Basmati LOOKS. It’s so thin and neat and clean, like Jerry Seinfeld’s concept of gay people.
10. Apple cider.