I love to look at the work of various chefs, always trolling for ideas to pocket and have turn up sometime later, perhaps a little jumbled looking from having gone through the brain equivalent of a wash cycle, in meals I cook.  I think there must always be a little ticker tape running in my mind storing up a restaurant meal here, a recipe there.  Not that they ever seem to come back to me when I most want them to.  But, they’re influential.

The food ideas from some quadrants are delectably comfortable, vindicating in a sense.  I see them and I think, ‘oh that’s exactly how I would have done that!’ Or, ‘ha! I’ve made almost exactly that before!  I should make it again sometime.’

Some food ideas shake you up a little, splash some cold water in your face to wake you up from the food ruts we all settle into, at times more frequently than not.  These are the dishes that inspire you with an ‘I would never have thought of that!’ nudge.  Sometimes that ‘I would never have thought of that’ is followed by an ‘and I’m intimidated by the very idea, and don’t think I actually want to try making something like that at all.’  Other times it’s followed by an ‘and I will make it the next chance I get!’

When I look at the food coming out of the Canal House, I find a perfect meandering back and forth between the first and third of those categories, sometimes discovering just the sorts of favorite things I was cooking anyways – but executed with an inspiring degree of perfection – and the sorts of dishes that make leave me excitedly scribbling notes all over pieces of scrap paper as my mind floods with ideas of how I want to try something of the sort myself.

It’s not such a surprise really, that I find them perennially inspiring.  They know what they’re doing, those two.  Christopher Hirsheimer and Melissa Hamilton are darlings of the culinary world, coming from well established cooking publications and then – living the dream!!! – leaving to set up shop in a small, terribly romantic, space where they experiment with food, and drink, and photography, and design and put out a gorgeous magazine (if it can even be called a magazine, it’s more substantial than that, let’s call it a book, or perhaps a publication) just once a season, to the oohing, aahing, and drooling of cooks everywhere.

My favorite thing is, they have a site where they publish a photograph and sentence long description of their lunch, daily.  It’s wonderful in how diverse and refreshingly real it is.  Most days, of course, they make you feel like your own lunch is quite inadequate.  But, like the rest of us, there are some days where they only muster the gumption to eat a hardboiled egg, a bit of bread and cheese, or order take out.  They still document it.

I don’t remember to go check the site that often, so when I do, I find myself scrolling through a month’s worth of lunches at a time, just taking it in.  And, there are almost always one or two things that catch my eye and send me running to grab (one of) my piece(s) of scrap paper where I jot ideas.  Such was the case with this pizza, which I saw there, oh, probably just over a week ago now.  Something about it made me do a double take, and then stuck with me like peanut butter on the roof of my mouth until I made it myself for dinner.

It’s a pizza elegantly scattered with mozzarella, paper thin slices of lemon, good olives, and rosemary, and then draped with lacey slices of prosciutto.  The combination of ingredients themselves is not entirely unexpected.  But, the idea of oozing, melting mozzarella with hauntingly fresh and tangy lemon, dark piney rosemary, and briny olives all blanketed with sweet, creamy prosciutto on a pizza seduced me with a single come hither glance.  I fell hard.  And I would do it all over again. In fact, I may soon.

I’m not usually one for restraint with my pizza.  I’m more of a pizza overloader, piling toppings so high that the poor crust groans, buckles, and breaks under the weight.  But, I was so entranced by this pizza concept that I stuck to it.  I tempered my enthusiasm for adding a mound of caramelized onions here, a pillow of ricotta there, and a handful of mushrooms just because.  I added only the brief list of ingredients that I saw in the photo.  Okay, plus some golden, sizzling garlic oil.  What is pizza without garlic? Well, and a pinch of Parmesan.  I’m not a saint here, kids.

Each ingredient, therefore, contributes the entirety of its character without having to throw any elbows or check any hips to try to find space and attention.  The delicate slices of lemon work wonders enlivening the other heavier ingredients.  I was especially surprised by how assertively, yet gently the rosemary wound its way through.  Like the head of a grand household, it nods agreeably to all the other ingredients, seeing to it that they all get along, while also floating above any fracas that might happen to occur (though none did).

We ate with such gusto, that it almost didn’t make it onto this site.  I certainly didn’t think to take any pictures in the moment.  Luckily, as I realized I absolutely wanted to share this with you, there was a lunch sized portion left over, perfect for reheating the next day to photograph (quickly because man did I want to get to the eating part!) and to enjoy just as enthusiastically as the night before.

Pizza with Mozzarella, Lemon, Olives, Lemon, and Prosciutto (serves about 4-6)

• enough pizza dough for 2, 10-12 inch pizza crusts (I tend to use this dough recipe, and this is a nice whole wheat one)
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
• 1 large or 2 small lemons, scrubbed, and sliced paper thin on a mandoline (or with an extremely sharp knife)
• 8 oz. fresh mozzarella, sliced into thin rounds
• about 20 pitted green olives
• about 1 1/2 Tbs. rosemary needles, fresh or dried will work
• about 2 Tbs. grated Parmesan
• about 6 thin slices of prosciutto, each divided in half

1. Preheat your oven to 500F.  If you have a pizza stone, have that in the oven while it heats, otherwise put a baking sheet in the oven to preheat.
2. In a small saucepan, combine the olive oil and garlic.  Cook over medium heat until the garlic is golden and crisp.  Use a slotted spoon to remove the garlic and discard it.  Set the oil aside.
3. Scatter your work surface with plenty of cornmeal.  Stretch your dough out into two thin rounds.  Brush each round thoroughly with the garlicky olive oil.  Arrange a layer of lemon slices on each, followed by a layer of mozzarella cheese slices.  Scatter the olives, the rosemary, and the Parmesan over the pizzas (you may have to smoosh the olives down a little to get them to stay in place).
4. Scatter cornmeal all over your pizza stone or baking sheet.  Transfer (using a peel if you have one, or large spatulas and lots of muttered curses if you don’t) one pizza onto the pizza stone/baking sheet in the oven.  Bake in the blistering heat until the crust is golden brown and the mozzarella is bubbling, 12 minutes or so.  Take the first pizza out of the oven and put it on a cutting board.  Transfer the second pizza into the oven to bake.  Drape half of the prosciutto slices over each of the pizzas after they come out of the oven.  Cut the finished pizzas into wedges and serve.  A crisp white wine on the side won’t hurt at all.

English is a language with a lot of great idiomatic phrases, so I take slight umbrage at the fact that there is no good taste equivalent for the saying “I could see it in my mind’s eye.”  At least, I don’t think there is.  If anyone out there knows one, will you please share it with me?  I would use it all the time.  I would probably drive everyone around me to drink, I would use it so often.  (So maybe it’s actually good I don’t know such a phrase.  It prevents the need for an intervention – for my overuse of it, or for the induced drinking problem in those who are sick of hearing it, I couldn’t say…)

It’s how I think about recipes, ingredients, and cooking.  I think many people who cook a lot do.  I imagine ingredients and preparations and I taste what they would be like in my mind’s mouth (ergh, see, that sounds ridiculous) before even cracking open the cupboards in the pantry.  And, when I see a dish of some sort, I do the same thing.

So, a while back when Heidi shared a recipe for roasted lemon chutney on her site, it tickled my mental taste buds.  Intriguing.  Very.  But, it didn’t quite galvanize me to act.  Until last week when the idea shape shifted subtly and reemerged as roasted orange chutney, laced with spices and ginger.  Yes!  That was what I wanted.

The flavors I imagined were as vivid in my mind as if they had just melted on my actual tongue.  I imagined something with all the best qualities of orange marmalade, bittersweet as the memory of a first kiss, and with a hit of hot pepper to make it just as spicy as well.  But, none of the jelly stickiness, please.  I imagined something coarser.  If marmalade is a frequenter of breakfast parlors and tea trays, this would be its cousin who left to work in the spice trade.  It’s a little roughed up, seen a bit of the world, but it hangs on to its genteel roots.

Roasting the oranges makes them mellower and even sweeter than they would otherwise be, so I decided I actually would roast some lemons as well.  The floral, herbal notes of lemon add an engaging complexity to the thoroughly citrus nature of the orange.  They also add acidity, so then you have to spoon in some sugar or honey to bolster the sweetness again, but bear with me because that type of more concentrated sweetness winds up striking just the right balance against the bitterness of the pith and peel that you blend in with the whole.

I wanted a slightly rugged chutney, it’s true, but I figured that adding raw garlic and ginger would be overpoweringly strong and could leave you with a mouth as foul as a sailor.  So, I roasted the garlic, the ginger, and a serrano pepper along with the fruit to take off their edge, like smudging the edges to prettify your pastel drawing.  Some raw shallots soaked with lemon juice and spices added enough bite for me.

When everything is roasted just to the point where golden brown patches start to appear, you take it and whirr it in the food processor with a stream of olive oil to make a spread, by turns silky, crunchy, and chunky.  It had all the flavors I hoped and imagined it would.  It’s wonderful on toast with goat cheese or sharp cheddar.  I also plopped it on top of some greens that I had sauteed with garlic and olives.  You could serve it with fish, pork, or chicken.

My favorite thing I’ve done with it so far, though, was to roast thick slices of sweet potato, like this, until deep chestnut on the outside and creamy on the inside (keep a very close eye on them – I had to whip them out of the oven earlier than the recipe calls for to keep them from incinerating, and even then, well, they had some lovely charred flavors), then top them with a smudge of chevre and a heap of chutney.  It tasted good in my imagination, but it tasted even more amazing in real life.

Roasted Orange Chutney (makes about 2 cups)

Pretty much everyone in my family is a card carrying nerd in his or her spare time.  You may not perceive this on first glance.  It’s a sort of internal nerdiness.  Our spirits wear broken glasses, high water pants, and pocket protectors.  We pick up on Star Wars references, and occasionally sing little songs under our breath about whatever it is we’re doing in the moment.  Ok, maybe it’s actually just me who does that.  But, whatever.  (Have you seen New Girl?  Kind of like that.)

One of my brothers has read famous political figures’ dissertations, for fun.  The last time I spoke to my mother, she was gleefully reading a stack of dictionaries.  (Some of them have fascinating material in their appendices.  Seriously.)  I have a certain propensity toward exploring the thesaurus.  My reliance on it during college verged on the religious, zealous, fervid, a little over the top.

As many of the food obsessed are wont to do, I also like to read through cookbooks.  So, when my middle brother gave me The Flavor Thesaurus for Christmas, well it was clear that the book and I were going to need to get a room.  I’ve been slowly savoring my way through it ever since.  It’s truly a magnificent little oeuvre, informative, but not remotely boring.

In fact, there are times when I’d like to pull a literary Tanya Harding on the author (I mean that extremely non-violently, of course) so I can steal some of her turns of phrase and use them as my own.  ”Lobsters meaty enough to have rowed themselves ashore and smacked a longshoreman in the chops for his trouble.” Seriously?  Why have I never thought to say something like that?

Anyhow, when we received a leg of lamb worthy of a Neanderthal dinner party in our meat CSA this month, it was my handy new compendium of pairings that inspired me.  I had just read the entry on lemons and lamb, and learned that in Greece they sometimes slowly simmer lamb in lemon juice, serving the well cooked meat in the concentrated tangy broth leftover in the pot when all is said and done.

Sounded like a pretty good concept to me!  Now, normally you roast a leg of lamb and serve it rare, saving braising for the lamb shoulder.  But, I’m always a little stressed out when I roast lamb.  When properly executed it’s sublime, so I don’t mean to deter anyone, but if you send it just past that rare point, well many will tell you that you just ruined yourself an expensive piece of meat there.

You can, however, braise leg of lamb just as well as you can shoulder.  And, braising is kind of a culinary miracle worker.  All you do is brown your meat well, throw in aromatics and some flavorful liquid, then leave the pot to cook at a low temperature for a couple of hours.  After the waiting period is over, uncover the pot and voila!  You will quickly convince yourself and anyone you are feeding that you are a cooking genius!

Such was the case, and then some, with this lamb.  I split it into several large chunks, too lazy even to cube it properly, and after browning it so that a rich, flavorful crust formed on the outside, I removed it from the pot and added in lots of garlic and onion, a couple of anchovies (anchovies are actually lamb’s mysterious best friend!  They add meaty richness without making it taste fishy.  Like lamb daydreaming of the ocean.  But you can leave them out if they make you uncomfortable.), and a small handful of rosemary for piney aroma that augments both lemon and lamb.

Next, went in the juice of several lemons and a small amount of stock.  You want enough liquid that the lamb will cook into meltingly tender, spoonable pieces, but not too much because you want it to cook down into an intensely flavored sauce.  I put the lamb back into this mix, covered it well, and left it in the oven for a couple of hours.

The lamb and the sauce come out amazing together.  The sweet, rich, gaminess of the lamb is cut by the vivid acidity of the lemon.  Succulent, and nicely balanced, especially with the perfume of the garlic and rosemary.  Fancying myself to be thinking rather Greek thoughts, I also made a cucumber yogurt sauce, spiked with a kick of cayenne and cumin (oops, not so Greek), to serve on the side.

I have a problem with forgetting condiments I’ve made and leaving them in the fridge until about halfway through the meal, then frantically rushing to the kitchen and toting them back out to add to whatever is left on our plates.  The first half of the meal was delicious.  The second half, sublime.  The creamy cool of the yogurt and cucumber ran and swirled into the meaty, lemony lamb juices and made it all even that much better.

In Greece – according to my reference book – lamb and lemon is traditionally served with either white beans or roasted potatoes.  I opted for roasting small cubes of potatoes in plenty of olive oil and salt, plus a sprinkling of thyme and sesame seeds to mimic za’atar spice (I was out), until they were crisp and golden as honey.  They really were the perfect complement.

I don’t know what I will cook next of the many things I’ve been inspired to dream up by my book.  But, if they’re anywhere near this good, I can promise you’ll be hearing about them too.

Lemon Braised Lamb with Rosemary (serves 6-8)

If at all possible, it is by far the best to make dishes like this (short ribs fall into this category too) a day ahead of time.  That way, you can refrigerate the pot over night, and the next day you can remove the layer of fat that will have solidified on top.  There’s nothing wrong with keeping the fat in the sauce, but it can make the dish feel oily to eat, and removing it gives you even more splendidly concentrated flavors.

• 3 lbs. boneless lamb leg or shoulder meat, cut into about 4 large chunks
• salt and pepper
• olive oil
• 4 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 2 oil-packed anchovy filets (optional)
• 1 Tbs. dried rosemary
• the juice of 3 large lemons
• 1 cup chicken stock

1. Preheat your oven to 325F.
2. Generously salt and pepper your lamb pieces.  In a large oven safe pot (a Dutch oven is an invaluable tool for braises), heat a big splash of olive oil over medium-high heat until shimmering.  Add in the lamb and cook until well browned on all sides, about 10 minutes.  If you need to, cook the lamb in batches. You don’t want the pieces to be crowded because then they’ll steam instead of browning, and browning is what seals in all the good flavor.  Transfer the browned lamb pieces to a plate.
3. Add the onion, garlic, anchovies (if using), and rosemary to the pot.  Stir and cook until the onion is softened, about 3-5 minutes.  Stir in the lemon juice and chicken stock, then add the pieces of lamb back to the pot.  Cover the pot tightly and transfer it to the oven.
4. Cook for 2-2 1/2 hours, or until the meat is extremely tender.  Remove from the oven.  Taste and adjust the salt and pepper to your liking.
5. Optional but recommended: allow the pot to cool, then refrigerate it overnight.  The next day, remove the hardened fat from the surface of the sauce and discard.  Gently reheat the remaining sauce and lamb until the lamb is heated through.
6. Serve warm, accompanied by the cucumber yogurt sauce (below) and roasted potatoes or smashed white beans.

Cucumber Yogurt Sauce with Cumin and Cayenne

• 1/2 an English cucumber, washed and cut into small cubes
• 1/2 cup Greek style yogurt
• 1/2 tsp. minced garlic
• 1/2 tsp. ground cumin
• a pinch of cayenne pepper
• 1/2 tsp. lemon juice

1. Stir all ingredients together.  Chill until ready to use.  You’ll need to stir it up again if it has sat for any period of time because it will have separated.  Serve alongside the braised lamb.

The first thing that Joel and I did together that could be classified (however questionably) as a date involved sitting at his kitchen table for 6 or 7 hours stuffing envelopes.  Not exactly romantic in the, ahem, classical sense.  In fact, I’m still trying to sort through exactly how he convinced me that that would be a worthwhile use of my day.  But, it did give us plenty of time to talk, and talk and talk and talk.  About literature, our personal histories and scandals, politics, friends, hopes and aspirations.

Good stuff.

He learned about me that I have trouble telling apart left and right, probably due to a brain lesion that I somehow acquired without even realizing it.  I had to use this to justify the fact that I accidentally put the stamp in the wrong corner of a stack of something like 100 envelopes.

I learned about him that he considered himself a connoisseur of macaroni and cheese.

In fact, he explained, he was a member of a gourmet macaroni and cheese appreciation club.  Never mind that the sum total of club members was limited to himself and two other friends with whom he had once had a conversation about the love of “gourmet” mac & cheese.

I use quotations because I next learned that, in club lexicon, the definition of gourmet included boxed Annie’s mac & cheese, as long as it had tomato pieces added to it.  The addition of bacon ratcheted it up even another level on the gourmand scale.

I, always looking for ways to identify and connect, shared that I sometimes liked to add avocado pieces to my mac & cheese, along with a lot of freshly ground black pepper.

And so, it was decided at the end of our long adhesive and address label filled day, that we would eat Annie’s macaroni and cheese, with tomato and avocado, for dinner.  And some Ben & Jerry’s for good measure.

It was simple – er, I mean gourmet – but it felt like a special moment for all of its low-key-ness, its comfortable familiarity.

And a number of years later, well here we are.

So, mac & cheese, with lots of goodies thrown in, has a special place in my heart.  I imagine it has a special place in many peoples’ hearts.  But, I have a different sort of soft spot for it.

Yet, I rarely make it.  Sometimes we bring a box of Annie’s, a tomato, and an avocado on hiking trips, but that’s about it.  And, I never make it from scratch.  Much to my dear husband’s deep chagrin.  So, when I told him the other day that I had decided I was going to make mac & cheese, his face lit up like a football stadium on game night.  Apparently it was about time!

This pasta, I must admit, is kind of the antithesis of a light meal, part of why I haven’t made something like it before.  Cream, cheese, bacon, all in one decadent bowl.  But, now and then, that’s just what you want to help you turn the page on a miserably busy and cold week.  Also, it was the other contribution that I had declared, in snap decision mode, that I would make for the Gojee bloggers potluck (And actually, starting on Thursday, January 26, check out other potluck dishes fellow gojee contributors shared. Go to gojee.com and enter “gojeepotluck” into I Crave.  You can also follow #gojeepotluck on Twitter.).

I guess it’s not technically mac & cheese because there is no mac.  In the place of small elbow noodles I used orecchiette, little ear shaped pasta, because I love its texture.  I threw in some peas that I had leftover from making curry, and the peas nestled into the pasta, creating the effect of a bowlful of oysters each hiding a brilliant spring green pearl.

The sauce, while not skimping on the cream by any means, stays vibrant with the help of some lemon zest and garlic.  Another little secret is the pinch of curry powder, something I learned from a friend that she uses in all of her gratins.  You don’t taste curry powder, it just makes the cream taste even richer and more like itself.  And who is going to object to that?  Then, generous handfuls of sharp Parmesan and mellow Fontina, melt into the sauce as it’s tossed with the pasta, so that it blankets everything.

The pancetta (or bacon), while flagrantly gilding the lilly, also adds a breathy smokey quality and makes the dish a little reminiscent of spaghetti a la carbonara, another indulgent pasta favorite.  A final handful of mint at the finish lends an almost sophisticated herbal note in what is otherwise an eminently, and delightfully, regressive dish.

As we were eating it, I asked Joel what his favorite mac & cheese was, and he said “this one!”  I chose to accept the full weight of the compliment.  There was just one problem though, he added.  What?  There’s no tomato.  I reminded him that tomatoes aren’t in season, but apparently that matters not when crafting the perfect cheesey pasta experience.  So, add them if you will, but I think I’ll take it as is.

Creamy Orecchiette with Peas, Pancetta, and Mint (serves 4-6)

• 10 slices of pancetta or bacon
• 16 oz. orecchiette, or other small pasta
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 1 rather large garlic clove, or two smaller cloves
• 1 tsp. fresh lemon zest
• a pinch of curry powder
• 1 1/2 cups frozen baby peas (or fresh, if you have them)
• 1 cup shredded Parmesan
• 1/2 cup shredded fontina
• salt and pepper
• 1/2 cup chopped fresh mint

1. In a large frying pan, fry the pancetta or bacon over medium heat until crisp.  Set aside on a paper towel lined plate to drain, then cut into small pieces.
2. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil.  Add the pasta and cook until al dente.  One minute before the pasta is ready, add in the peas.
3. While the pasta is cooking, put the cream, garlic, lemon zest, and curry powder, plus a pinch of salt into a saucepan.  Bring to a boil, then turn down to a simmer and simmer for three minutes.  Remove from the heat.
4. When the pasta and peas are cooked, drain them.  Toss the pasta, peas, cream sauce, and the shredded cheeses together until the pasta is well coated (I always have some trouble with cheese clumping on my wooden spoon, but with enough scraping it off and stirring, these things tend to work themselves out!).  Stir in the pancetta (bacon).  Taste and add salt and pepper to taste.  Right before serving, stir in the mint.  Serve!

Banana bread and I go way back.  Way.

It was “my thing” for a while, actually.

Growing up, my mother’s baking repertoire was very nearly purebred Norwegian, and concentrated solely on holidays.  The rest of the time the oven’s use was confined to roasts and braises.  If it wasn’t boller, birthday cake, or a Christmas cookie, it didn’t get baked at our house.

But, every now and then at a friend’s house I would be invited to have a bite of something wonderful for a snack.  A lace-thin slice of intensely moist, banana flavored, bread-cake, shot through with the little black squiggles that banana bread develops, and now and then with melting chocolatey chunks.  Best. Snack. Ever.  I was convinced of it.  I would dream of it often during the long, stark periods during which I had to do without.

When I was in high school, my parents started getting the cooking magazine Eating Well.  It was approximately at that age that I decided I wanted to eat healthfully (you know, in between boxes of Oatmeal Crème Pies and Samoa cookies.  My ideas are a little more consistent now.  Also, more holistically defined.), so I would rifle through the pages of the magazine, feeling virtuous, and looking for things I thought we should cook.

Then one day I discovered a recipe for “easy banana bread.”  It did look easy!  I had a deep distrust in my baking skills, but I decided I was going to try it nonetheless.  I mashed those bananas, stirred in oil, then  sugar, and eggs, and flours, and I baked up some perfectly acceptable banana bread.  I ate about 3/4s of it all by myself, one slice at a time, standing over the cooling rack next to the oven.

The remaining quarter of the loaf I was generous enough to share with the other four members of my family – at least, I think I was.  Maybe it wasn’t until future loaves that I became willing to share.  Either way, my family quickly developed a certain fondness for it too.

After I went to college, my brothers would request it whenever I came home on break.  “Hey Em!  Can you bake some of that banana bread?”  Given that at that stage in their lives they had thought that a pug would be a suitably sister-like replacement for me after I left for school (my parents, wisely, said no), I would take any appreciation from them I could get.  So, if I was home, banana bread was a regular product of our oven.

I always started from that original old recipe, splattered and wrinkled in my recipe notebook, but I changed and augmented it at will as I became more comfortable in the kitchen.  Varying the amount of sugar, swapping in some honey, adding extra eggs, trying it with olive oil, switching up the flour, adding chunks and nuts of all varieties.

One summer in Norway, about four years ago, my family requested banana bread out of the blue.  I don’t even know how the idea came up, but we wound up promising my little cousin and his friend that I would make them a very special treat of banan brød.  I had no recipe at all to work from, just intuition and years of measurement muscle memory.  I couldn’t tell you exactly how I made it, except that it involved the requisite banana, and flour, and also some renegade sour cream (yum).  But, it came out deliciously.

My cousin and his friend couldn’t stop chattering about it.  My dad doused his with cognac and whipping cream and discovered a delightful new pathway to decadence.  At that point, I was officially declared the banana bread queen.  And, since my family is, in fact, the official banana bread academy, nominating and voting on royalty and lower court members, well, I consider it official.

So, when the lovely folks at Gojee invited all of their contributors to a potluck, in person for those who could make it and virtual for those who couldn’t, my snap response to what I would bring was banana bread.  I mean, who isn’t excited to find approachable, always tasty banana bread there amidst the eclectic spread of a potluck?  (And, just an FYI and completely unsubtle plug – I’m not a good plugger! – starting on Thursday, January 26, you can check out other potluck dishes fellow gojee contributors shared. Go to gojee.com and enter “gojeepotluck” into I Crave.  And, you can follow #gojeepotluck on Twitter. Yippee skipee!)

Except, I didn’t want to sound boring, so what I actually said was “ginger banana bread,” even though I had never made such a thing.  I just had a vague half-baked idea of a combination gingerbread-banana bread delight in my mind.  Which meant, I had to set out to create it.

Now, it turns out that a dark, molasses-y gingerbread with bananas is not my favorite thing.  I love the pure banana flavor of plain banana bread too much, and lots of spices overwhelms it.  It’s muddy, somehow.

Flooding banana bread batter with chunks of crystallized ginger, on the other hand, turns the bread into a dramatically lit banana-y stage for sultry, spicy ginger to do a little vamping across.

To pull even a little more heady spice back into the blend, I sprinkled the top of the loaf with sugar, cardamom and just a suggestion of nutmeg before baking it.  This transforms into a beautifully perfumed, crunchy crust as thin and delicate as the winter’s first ice on a pond.  It sits atop the tender crumb of the interior and creates a similar effect to the burnt sugar crust on a crème brulee.

Banana bread can skew either towards sturdy and bread-like or moist, dense, and delicate, like a cake.  I like both, but this one is pretty solidly on the cake end of the spectrum, and I must say, it is perhaps the best I’ve ever made.  It’s slightly more appropriate as a dessert (with cognac and cream anyone?) or accompaniment to afternoon coffee than as a breakfast.  But, we’ve been eating it for breakfast too, and there has been a notable lack of complaint.

And, if you’re a banana bread purist, you can skip the ginger chunks, and the crunchy topping, and just bake the batter up plain, and simple, and delicious.

Ginger Banana Bread with Cardamom Crunch Topping (makes one loaf)

• 2 cups all purpose flour (replace up to a cup with the equivalent amount of whole wheat flour, if you wish)
• 1 tsp. baking powder
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• ½ tsp. salt
• ½ cup chopped crystallized ginger
• 2 eggs
• ¾ cup sugar
• 3 1/2 very ripe bananas, mashed
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract
• 2 Tbs. creme fraiche or sour cream
• ½ cup vegetable oil (preferably peanut oil or canola oil, you can even use a nice olive oil if you wish.  I’ve done it.  It’s great.)
• 1 ½ Tbs. coarse sugar (raw, demerrera, or muscavado.  Regular sugar will work too if you don’t have any of those, though), for the topping
• 1 tsp. cardamom and a pinch of nutmeg, for the topping

1. Grease a standard loaf pan well, and preheat your oven to 350F.  In a medium bowl stir together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and crystallized ginger.
2. In another mixing bowl, beat together the eggs and sugar until thick and lightened in color, about 5 minutes.
3. Stir in the mashed banana, the vanilla, the creme fraiche, and finally the oil, until well combined.
4. Gently fold in the dry ingredients, just until everything is combined and there are no dry streaks left.  DO NOT overmix!  Seriously, don’t.  There’s a delicate banana bread ecosystem going on here, and you don’t want to upset the balance because it will make the finished bread tough.
5. Scrape the batter into the prepared loaf pan.  Mix together the 1 ½ Tbs. sugar with the cardamom and nutmeg.  Sprinkle this evenly over the batter.  Bake for 45-60 minutes (the actual time will depend totally on your oven), until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
6. Allow to cool in the pan for 10 minutes, then run a knife around the edges to loosen it, take the bread out of the pan, and put on a cooling rack to cool the rest of the way.  The flavor is actually the best when the bread is fully cooled, but I know I can’t stop myself nabbing a thin slice while it’s still warm and eating it spread with butter, so I won’t blame you for doing so either.

I am always on the lookout for things to do with ground beef.  I’ve expounded before on how much we love our meat farm share, how cool farmer Kim is, how wonderful it is to know where your meat comes from.  Because, seriously, it really is.  And overall, I don’t mind not being able to choose specific cuts of meat, for we generally receive a remarkable variety.  We do wind up with a lot of ground beef, though.  Not as much as my parents, who buy a substantial portion of a cow every year, but a lot nonetheless.

So, we have a regular rotation of spaghetti bolognese, chili, beef tacos, and back to spaghetti, like a song on repeat.  At least it’s a pretty good song (I used to dread spaghetti when I was little because I felt like we had it so often. Now I understand why, and I welcome it almost weekly as a satisfying respite from thinking about the age old question of what’s for dinner).

Then there’s the occasional meatball or hamburger thrown in, depending on the season.  Meatloaf has shown up a couple of times too.  I welcome it in and try to give it something like a homemade apple barbecue sauce to make it feel at home.  It makes awfully good leftover sandwiches, however awkward I feel about meat in a loaf form.

But, as I said, I’m always on the lookout for new potential rotational admitees, so I was thrilled when I discovered keema beef curry.  Keema, I believe, means minced, and a keema curry is one that uses finely chopped or ground meat.  A stupendous idea, that!  I felt fairly ridiculous that I hadn’t ever thought of it before.  I sautee, spice, add tomatoes, and use ground beef in chili left and right.  But never in all of this cooking had I tried to call a quick time out and substitute out the chile powder for fresh-legged curry powder.

And into the rotation it shall indeed go.  I go on curry benders throughout the winter.  They have the comforting, gentle warmth of your standard stew, but with more energetic spicing.  Stews are hunker down at home food.  Curries are hunker down at home food masquerading as going out food.  Everybody wins!

This keema curry, while lacking the fork tender hunks of braised meat you find in other beef curries, is rich and deeply flavorful, redolent with ginger, curry, and coconut.  The sweet little peas dotting the curry are a classic companion to beef.  A wholesome Fred and Ginger, dancing their way through stews, shepherd’s pies, pasties, stir fries (if your peas are of the sugar snap variety), and this curry.

Serve over some basmati rice with fresh naan or chapati on the side, add a sprinkling of cilantro, and you have yourself quite a meal.  You would never realize that the original motivation for the curry was looking for something, anything, new to do with ground beef.

I have a suspicion that this curry may be even better with ground lamb…but that wouldn’t use up any beef, now would it?

Keema Beef Curry (serves 4-6) adapted from Food & Wine, January 2012

• 1 tablespoon butter
• 1 1/2 pounds ground beef
• 1 large onion, finely chopped
• 3 large garlic cloves, minced
• Salt and freshly ground pepper
• 2 tablespoons minced fresh ginger
• 2 tablespoons Madras curry powder
• 1 large Yukon Gold potato, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch chunks
• 1 1/2 cups chicken broth
• One 14-ounce can unsweetened coconut milk
• One 14-ounce can diced tomatoes
• 1 1/2 cups frozen baby peas
• Chopped cilantro
• Warm naan or chapati and cooked rice, for serving

1. In a large pot, or deep skillet, heat the butter over medium high heat, until foaming.  Add the ground beef, sprinke with salt and pepper, and cook, breaking it apart into small pieces, until there is no pink left.
2. Add the onion, garlic, ginger, and curry powder.  Stir and cook until the onion has softened, about 5-7 minutes.
3. Stir in the potato, making sure to coat it with all the flavors in the pot.  Add the broth, coconut milk, and canned tomatoes with their juices.  Bring to a boil, turn down to a simmer, and cook until the potato is tender and the sauce has thickened, about 15-20 minutes.
4. Use a wooden spoon to crush most of the potatoes into the broth.  Stir in the peas and continue to cook until the peas are just cooked through, around 5 more minutes.  Season with more salt and pepper to taste.
5. Serve sprinkled with chopped cilantro, accompanied by rice and/or naan or chapati.

Let’s take a moment to reflect on couscous, shall we?  My family, as I recall, seems to have discovered couscous some time part of the way through my tenure in high school.  I don’t know how my mother stumbled on it or decided to purchase it, all I remember is that she served it for the first time for supper one day (alongside pork tenderloin and acorn squash if my memory serves me correctly, which it tends to when it comes to meals), and it felt like the epitome of novelty.

I was certain we were eating something flashy, exotic, new, the food equivalent of getting the first version of the iphone, right when it came out.  And this fit in lockstep with my budding epicurean ideals – which back in high school, I’ll admit, were more about the appearance of sophistication and taste than anything else.  High school.  Jeez.

Back then we just ate the Middle East brand couscous with the spice packet mixed in.  That was fancy enough for us.  (to extend the iphone metaphor: my phone gets internet!!!  Oh my gosh!  It totally doesn’t matter that it can’t seem to actually make phone calls most of the time…)  But, as couscous has completely mainstreamed, I think most of us have come to expect a little more in the preparation of this tiny noodle.

Regarding that, couscous really is a type of pasta.  I find this befuddling when I think of regular couscous with its tiny grain like shape.  How do they make those?!  What kind of minute elves do they have rolling them?

Israeli couscous, with its pearl sized beads, makes more sense to me.  It looks like something I could have made myself – in a nonedible, colorful version – back in my Sculpey clay jewelry days (days that preceded the high school epicurean ones by, oh, only a third of a decade or so).

I like both varieties of couscous, but I find I often prefer the heartier, satisfying feel of the larger Israeli couscous between my teeth.  And, no matter what, I always like my couscous ditted and dotted with loads of colorful vegetables, fruits, herbs, and spices.  Like the savory, veggie studded side dish answer to a funfetti cake.

The combinations I use vary every time, though given the Middle Eastern origins of couscous, they most frequently tend toward the flavors of that part of the world.  This one, however, is a little Latin American-ish because I made it for a dinner party (the self same one at which I served the parsnip and leek soup) to pair with braised shortribs that had a heap of chile powder in them.  Why I chose to make couscous as the side dish, I cannot say, but Latin American Middle Eastern fusion can work, right?  It actually did, I’d say.  At least, very nearly everyone asked for the recipe.

In keeping with the season, I roasted up cubes of sweet golden butternut squash to toss in, as I often do with pasta at this time of year.  Then, my mind spinning between salsa verde, cilantro oil, pesto, and a number of other herb-y sauces, I found myself whizzing together a bundle of cilantro with garlic, some musky, citrusy cumin and coriander, tangy lemon juice (lime would also work), and a long slow drizzle of olive oil to emulsify it into a slick, fragrant emerald green sauce.

Toast the couscous before you add hot water, and you’ll find that you coax out a light nutty that is a wonderful backdrop for all these flavors.  The tiny spheres become tender, but chewy, and are deliciously cloaked by the sauce.  The roasted squash is also tender and caramelized, and if you throw in some finely chopped preserved lemon you’ll welcome its contrasting intense brined floral and citrus flavor.  For a contrast in texture, add whatever type of toasted nut you like or some crunchy toasted chickpeas (drain and dry some canned chickpeas, toss them with olive oil and salt and roast on a baking sheet until crunchy, around 30 minutes).

This could be a meal in and of itself, particularly if accompanied by a nice salad.  But, it also makes a very tasty side dish for, oh, say, chile braised shortribs, for example.  Or, serve it with really almost any protein prepared simply or with some similar warm, musky flavors.  It may no longer seem exotic and new, but it still suits my epicurean ideals just fine.

Israeli Couscous with Butternut Squash and Cilantro Sauce (serves 4)

• 1/2 large butternut squash (or a whole smallish one), peeled and cut into 1/2 inch cubes
• 2 small garlic cloves, peeled and coarsely chopped
• 4 cups of loosely packed cilantro leaves
• 1/2 tsp. ground cumin
• 1 tsp. ground coriander
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• juice of 1/2 a lemon
• 3-4 Tbs. olive oil
• 6 oz. plain Israeli couscous (also know as pearled couscous or fregola sarda)
• 2 1/2 cups boiling water
• 1/2 cup toasted nuts of your choice (or toasted chickpeas)
• 1 Tbs. finely chopped preserved lemon (optional)
• olive oil
• salt and pepper

1. Heat your oven to 425F.  Toss the butternut squash cubes with a big drizzle of olive oil and a sprinkling of salt and pepper.  Spread them on a rimmed baking pan and roast in the oven until tender and starting to brown, 25-30 minutes. Stir them once or twice during the roasting process.  Remove from the oven and set aside.
2. In a small food processor, chop together the garlic, cilantro, cumin, coriander, and 1/2 tsp. salt.  Add in the lemon juice and continue to process until finely chopped.  Then, with the processor running, drizzle in 3-4 Tbs. of olive oil until it forms a loose sauce.  Set aside.
3. Bring your 2 1/2 cups water to a boil in one pot.  In another medium pot, toast the couscous over medium heat until it starts to turn lightly golden, about 5 minutes.  Then, add the water, 1 Tbs. of olive oil, and a pinch of salt.  Reduce heat to a simmer, and cook uncovered until the water is absorbed and the couscous is tender, about 12 minutes.  Cover and let rest for 5 minutes.
4. In a large serving bowl, toss together the couscous, cilantro sauce, roasted butternut squash pieces, toasted nuts, and preserved lemon if using.  Gently toss until everything is well coated with the sauce.  Taste and adjust salt and pepper to taste.  Serve warm.

What would you do if you weren’t afraid of failing?

It’s not an original question, I’ll admit.  Quite the contrary, in fact.  It’s pretty painfully cheesy, like those horrible motivational posters we used to have in our gym locker rooms for high school sports, or the quotes I carefully wrote into my journals, in metallic pens and with cutesy cut-outs as decorations.

Yet, it was the question I found myself asking in my mind last night as I got ready for bed and contemplated the journey back to Boston and working/studying/data analysis/teaching/writing/whatever-it-is-I-actually-do after a swift and very full holiday vacation.  I have a tentative nature when it comes to work and school, and I put a lot of effort, particularly mental effort, into trying to make sure I do everything right and just as others want.  The idea of failing is so scary I almost never allow myself to fully contemplate it.

Not so with cooking.  There, I am not so afraid of mistakes.  Sometimes I might even be daring.  I certainly try things I’ve never tried before all the time, even when I’m cooking for strangers or people I want to impress.  Perhaps it’s because of the extremely concrete nature of what failure would mean in this context. Barring hacking a limb off with a knife or burning the entire house down, failure simply means you make something that tastes horrible, neither you nor your guests will want to eat it, and you will simply have to do one of the following: a) throw together something super simple and quick in it’s place (like spaghetti or grilled cheese); b) order take out; or c) skip straight to dessert.  And in the end you’ll probably laugh.

When it comes to work or school, failure feels far less concrete, far more scary.  Not doing as well as I’m expected to on something may, in fact, signal doomsday.  Complete and utter catastrophic chaos.  That’s what I would have myself think, at least.  Which makes work an even more strenuous proposition than it otherwise would be.

But, the fact of the matter (I think. I hope.) is that in this context, it is just as in cooking.  Failure is failure, nothing more.  It is not the end of the world.  Failure may mean having to apologize, or maybe having some responsibilities revoked or having someone laugh at you, or maybe even getting kicked out and having to find something else.  Which would be hard, possibly painful.  But still, it turns out this probably wouldn’t be the end of the world.

I’m terrible at resolutions.  I tend to forget them within a few days.  But, I make them nonetheless, if only to make a brief mental commitment to a particular direction or disposition.  This year, I am resolving to try to throw myself into everything with the attitude I have in cooking, a little bravery and abandon.  I doubt it will work all the time, but even the occasional reminder and attempt is a good thing.  We all get places one step at a time.

And, with this attitude, I’m also sharing with you a parsnip and leek soup that I made for a dinner party at my parents’ house.  The guests were a set of very discerning (also extremely loving and easy to please, but we’re going to leave that out for the sake of drama here) family friends who hear stories about my cooking and have, shall we say, expectations.  One guest, even, was an extremely talented professional chef.  Obviously the stakes were high (we’re going for drama, remember).

So, me being me, I made a bunch of things I had never made before.  That’s just how I roll.  They weren’t exactly my own recipes – I had way too tantalizing a stack of new cookbooks from the season’s gift giving not to go trolling through them for ideas – they were mostly adapted from Melissa Clark’s new book Cook this Now (which, in spite of its bossy title, is filled with extremely easy going and friendly recipes and headnotes).  We had braised short ribs, a couscous pilaf (ok, I admit, I totally winged that one), and a cranberry cornmeal upside down cake.  But, this parsnip and leek soup, which I made for a starter, may have been my favorite part of the meal.

It’s a twist on the classic comfort-soup potato and leek combo.  The leeks still bring their mellow, green-tinged oniony flavor to the mix, but where potatoes are so mild and creamy as to be almost bland in soup, in this soup the parsnip flavor jovially flings open the shutters and cries, “here I am!” It is redolent with complex sweetness, woodiness, and a trace of spiciness.

There is a bit of potato for bulk, and the addition of celery stalks and leaves (in a much greater quantity than your standard mirepoix) offsets the sweetness with a pleasant, thin bitterness.  With a powerful blender, you can whirr this into an impressively creamy soup.  If you are like my mother, who likes cream in quantities even larger than I care for (we are dairy fanatics, my family), you may want to stir in a bit of creme fraiche at the end.  But, I don’t think it needs it.  What is nice is a last-minute squeeze of lemon, to add perkiness to the thick, warm hug of the soup.  Finally, some homemade croutons of a hearty, seeded bread give nice bites of crunch.

Of course, you could also sprinkle on bacon.  Or, I can say from experience that chunks of smoked salmon are good stirred in.  You could spice the soup up a little with some nutmeg, or some curry, or something else entirely.  Experiment.  Here’s to a brave new year!

Parsnip and Leek Soup (serves 6) adapted from Cook This Now by Melissa Clark

• 4 Tbs. butter
• 5 large leeks, white and light green parts only
• 1 tsp. salt, plus more
• 3 celery stalks, with their leaves on if possible
• a small bunch of thyme (about 4 twigs)
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 1/2 lbs. parsnips, peeled and thinly sliced
• 2-3 small potatoes, peeled and chunked
• 6 cups chicken or vegetable broth
• a squeeze of lemon juice
• several thick slices of hearty multigrain bread

1. Slice the leeks in half lengthwise, but stopping before you quite get through the white part of the bulb (so they won’t be completely cut in half, but have a long slit down their middles), put them in a large bowl of warm water and let them soak for about 10 minutes.  Drain out the water and the grit that has fallen out of the leeks.  Give the leeks a second rinse, just to be sure you’ve cleaned out all of the dirt.  Then, slice them thinly.
2. Melt the butter in a large soup pot over medium heat.  Add the leeks, 1 tsp. salt, and a nice sprinkling of black pepper. Cover, and cook gently until the leeks are soft but not brown, 5-7 minutes.
3. In the meantime, remove the tops from the celery stalks (the leafy part) and set aside, then thinly slice the celery.  Add the celery to the pot, uncover and sautee for about another 5 minutes, until the celery is starting to become shiny.  At this point, throw in the celery leaves, the thyme, and the bay leaf.  Add the parsnips, potatoes, and the broth.  Bring to a boil, then turn down to a simmer, cover, and cook until the vegetables are completely soft, around 40 minutes.
4. Fish out the celery leaves, thyme, and bay leaf.  Puree the soup in batches until it is smooth and creamy (add a little extra water or broth if it is too thick).  Taste it and add more salt and pepper plus some squirts of lemon juice to taste.
5. While the soup is simmering, cut the bread slices into crouton sized cubes.  Toss them with a drizzle of olive oil, spread them on a baking sheet, and bake at 350F until they are crispy, about 10-15 minutes.
6. To serve, ladle the soup into bowls, sprinkle with croutons, and drizzle with a wee bit of olive oil if desired.

I’m slightly green.  And not, unfortunately, the trendy, socially desirable, eco-conscious kind (though I do try to be that).  I’m afraid I’m the unpleasant green of jealous envy, though I think it is at least a pastel, non-menacing sort of a shade.

It’s a friendly jealousy, you know, like teasing can be friendly.

A day before Christmas, a couple of Joel’s childhood friends, with whom I’ve also become friends, were in town.  Dear friends we look for any excuse to get together with.  And there we all were.  Such fun!

We met up in some high bluffs – aspirational foothills, even – near one of our friends’ family’s house, and went for an invigorating tromp through the brush and woods.  Then, we descended to the house for lunch.

It’s a jealousy worthy house.  An open, airy plan with high ceilings, large windows, and elegantly spare yet cozy furnishings.  They also have a wine cellar that nearly brought me to my knees.  Not for it’s size (it’s on postage stamp scale) or sumptuousness, but rather for the care and taste with which it was curated.  So jealous – I’m considering moving in.

But, the true source of envy, the thing I would make off with in the middle of the night if it didn’t weigh a couple of tons (and if I wasn’t intent on them using it again the next time I visit ) was the stove.  A Finnish soapstone stove, a Tulikivi.   Those things are wonders, soaking up the heat of a roaring, fast-burning fire then softly radiating heat for the next 24 hours.

My family actually has one too, up at our cabin.  But as hard as I lobbied back when they were buying it, I was unable to convince my parents that they actually really needed to invest in the version with an oven built in.  Our friend’s family had.

Thus it was that when we came lumbering in from our hike, we found the fire burning down in the stove, the oven heated to a smoldering 800F, and pillowy mounds of pizza dough just waiting for our entrance to be shaped and topped.

It’s hard to believe the hospitality.  And it became even more unbelievable, and ever more delicious, as fine cheeses, Serrano ham, sauces and herbs lined themselves up in shallow bowls on the counter.

A couple of bottles of wine emerged – heaven! – and we ogled, oohed, and applauded as our friends judiciously sprinkled toppings on the thinly pulled pizza rounds, lifted them on floury peels to shove them into the often, and then a speedy four minutes later transferred blistered, bubbling, fragrant pizzas from the oven to our plates.

We hadn’t really hiked that far, but we ate as if we’d been on trail for a week.  You couldn’t not, it was too delicious.

We had classic pizza margherita, as well as a version with paper-thin slices of serrano ham.  We had a tasty sweet-savory pizza with pears and gorgonzola, a classic combination.  But, the most interesting one we had our friend based on a pizza he’d had at the Cheese Board in Berkely (a destination of ours every time we happen to wander through that town!).  On your pizza crust, thinly spread some very good quality cream cheese or mascarpone (if it’s a bit warm it will spread more easily), layer on thinly sliced roasted or parboiled potato, thinly sliced pasillo peppers, and a nice sprinkling of Parmesan cheese.

Bake the pizza until the crust is golden and bubbly.  When it comes out of the oven sprinkle it with just a little pinch of smoked sea salt (or fleur de sel would be good too) and a small handful of chopped cilantro.  Squeeze lime wedges over it and serve!  Even if you don’t have a soapstone pizza oven to bake it in, I think you’ll enjoy it.

We’re in Eastern Washington for Christmas, then on to Northern Minnesota for New Year’s.

Squid is with us – the amazing traveling puppy!  She’s enjoying meeting the rest of her human family, and absolutely loving playing in the woods and meeting other dogs.

Our Christmas looks like it will be white with a sparkling diamond layer of frost, rather than snow, but at least it’s some white.

Wishing you peace, joy, and love in this holiday season!