central park picnic

Look how awesome my summer was before I broke my stupid mouth:



That's me eating a delicious Viennese cucumber salad in central park before taking a free canoe ride on the Harlem Meer.



That's the salad before I packed it up to bring to the park. It was easy and light and summery. I tried to score the cucumbers with the tines of a fork, but it didn't come out quick as neat and pretty as I had hoped. The taste, however, came through in full force.



I sliced the two cucumbers as thinly as possible, and then tossed them in a colander with a tablespoon of salt. I drained that in the sink for an hour, and then rinsed with cold water and squeezed out the excess. I mixed ⅓ cup white-wine vinegar, 1/4 cup water, 2 teaspoons sugar, and a teaspoon of dillweed and heated it on the stove until the sugar dissolved. There was also supposed to be a crushed clove of garlic, but I forget to add it, (*GASP!*), and I actually didn't even miss it. I quickly cooled the liquid in the freezer, and then poured it over the cucumber, and let that pickle overnight. It was tangy and delicious, and not too vinegary. It was a nice thing to eat outdoors on a summer's day.



And look at me eating it! What a mouthful! It's kind of weird how I happened to take all these extremely "LOOK AT ME, I'M EATING WITH MY MOUTH OPEN" photos immediately before breaking my jaw. I miss that freedom. I miss that food. And that's not all there was either.



There was pesto, because that's what I make whenever I have basil, and it's always delicious.



And my handsome boyfriend, eating a corn salad with tomato, cilantro and black beans, all from the food co-op and the Mount Morris Park farmer's market. The two ears of perfectly sweet and crunchy corn were raw, the cup of beans was simmered for a couple of hours and it was all tossed with half a large tomato, a small handful of chopped cilantro, and some salt and pepper. It was tasty, but even better when I grabbed half a lime and added the juice the next day. Gotta love that acid.



I loved it all, but Nathan wasn't crazy about the spread I put together. He felt our lunch was a bit too light and not filling enough. He also apparently doesn't like corn off the cob. First, boy is crazy, and second, I'd give just about anything to be able to eat a lunch like this right now. This is the last entry I have of my life before my jaw is broken, aside from some much earlier stuff that Nathan was supposed to blog about but probably won't. I'm not sure what shape the blog will be taking from here on out... Stay tuned to find out what a food blogger does when she breaks her jaw...

ghetto black bean soup

black bean soup with cumin crema

I made this a couple of Thursdays ago while I was watching an evening's worth of NBC comedies. I was kind of cranky because I think some plan for the night had fallen through, leaving me with nothing to do and nothing in the house to make for dinner. As I sat there vegging out and gradually growing hungrier and hungrier, I decided it was time to do something with some of those black beans from the food co-op that I had sitting in the pantry. I threw a large handful of them in a pot with some water without much thought, and eventually wound up with the soup pictured above.

This tasted quite tasty considering I was pretty much winging it. I have no idea how long I cooked this for, as I kind of started without realizing what I was doing. I improvised a lot. I didn't have any ham or peppers, like my mother would have used, or any chilies, red onion or lime, like this recipe suggested. However, beans are of themselves pretty rich and hearty, so I guess that the bulk of the flavor is already there, and all the add ins are less essential.

Basically, what happened was that I had the beans boiling away, and I kept adding more water, and then after awhile I added a cup or two of my homemade stock. Then I sauteed up some yellow onion with salt and pepper and a healthy sprinkling of cumin, and tossed that in the pot as well. I cooked this all on a really high boil because I was hungry and didn't want to wait a million years for dinner. In lieu of the ham, I diced a slice and a half of bacon, (a terrible brand to boot), and threw it in the frying pan. Once it had crisped up I added it into the soup with the pan drippings. I checked the beans every once in a while, and when I decided they were soft enough/I was too hungry to wait any longer, I went to town with the immersion blender. If you cook this the proper amount of time, blenders are unnecessary, but I was already taking a lot of liberties with the dish, so I decided to expedite my dinner.

The one ingredient I strangely did have was cumin seeds, which I toasted in a frying pan, ground up as best I could with my muddler, and mixed into some sour cream. This "crema" is a Bobby Flay recipe, and it probably would have been delicious had my sour cream not somehow frozen in the back of the fridge. In case you were wondering, it does not defrost well. At all. However, you could tell this was good.

All in all, the soup came out way better than I could have reasonably expected. I would have topped it with a little fresh cilantro, but I didn't have any. I needed something green for the photograph though... Spinach. I tore up some spinach. Like I said, ghetto black bean soup. Good, but ghetto. Will definitely have to try making this again properly, because it's one of my favorite soups, and mom has a GREAT recipe for it.