LittleJudeonFood

One kid's adventures in gastronomy

Category Archives: Vegetables


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Stuff It

In an effort to fill a Sunday, Mama and I traipsed around to different farm stands (with a stop at the zoo somewhere in between). Next to the zucchini that was almost as big as me, she spied some gorgeous giant yellow peppers and thought they would make good stuffers. At a later stand, she bought a couple ears of sweet corn (this is important, so pay attention).

Much like our ham-and-pea roll-ups, these peppers were stuffed with things we already had in the house. Mama says you can cram practically anything into them. She cut around the top of the pepper and pulled out the seedy core. Then she broke off the pieces of the pepper top and chopped it so she could add it to the pepper stuffing mix. We still had some tiny heirloom tomatoes from my friend Walter, and we had an already-cut onion in the fridge. She put these veggies into a small frying pan with olive oil, cumin, coriander, and salt & pepper and sautéed them until the pepper and onion were soft and the tomatoes were cooked down. She added the kernels from an ear of corn and some crumbled veggie meatballs she had made a few weeks ago and had in the freezer.

How can these not be good?

How can these not be good?

She stuffed a pepper for me, then added to the rest of the stuffing some adobo sauce from a can of chipotle peppers that were also leftover in the freezer. Mama tented foil over the peppers and baked them in a 375°F oven until they softened, 20–30 minutes. She took the foil off towards the end of cooking, to brown the tops of the peppers.

You can see the added corn & broken up "meat"balls added to the filling.

You can see the added corn & broken up “meat”balls added to the filling.

Meanwhile, Mama cooked some brown rice, but she could very well have used quinoa or couscous. You can certainly add this to the pepper stuffing, but she kept it on the side and added it to the peppers before we ate them. She also made a fast guacamole and baked some tortilla chips by breaking up a whole-wheat wrap, spraying the pieces with cooking spray, and putting them in the oven for 10 minutes while the peppers cooked. (You can season these with salt & cumin, but Mama left them plain.)

Though I’m generally a fan of avocados, I wasn’t too keen on the guacamole. I did dip my chips in it (just barely), though. And to everyone’s surprise, I ate more than a few bites of the pepper stuffing. I had to examine each bite first to figure out what was on my fork, and I wasn’t much in the mood to eat (having missed my nap), but eat it I did. Mama and Papa kept asking, “Isn’t it silly that there’s a pepper for a bowl?” I’ll tell you what’s silly: they ate their bowls. Now, isn’t that silly?

Love, Jude

Peppers Stuffed with Summer Goodness

1 teaspoon + 1 tablespoon olive oil
12 ounces extra-lean ground beef, ground pork, or soy crumbles [optional]
4 sturdy bell peppers (any color)
1 onion, finely chopped
1 pint cherry or grape tomatoes, halved
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1 ear corn, kernels removed (about 3/4 cup)
1 chipotle pepper in adobo sauce, chopped [optional]

Preheat the oven to 375°F.

In a medium skillet over medium heat, heat 1 teaspoon olive oil. Add the beef and cook, stirring occasionally, until just barely cooked through, about 6 minutes. (If using frozen soy crumbles, cook until heated through.)

Meanwhile, carefully cut around the top of each pepper, right below the “shoulder,” then pull out the seedy core. (Save the tops.) Pull out any remaining ribs and seeds. Set cored peppers aside. Break off the pepper tops from the stems, and roughly chop.

To the skillet, add the remaining tablespoon olive oil, if necessary. Add the chopped pepper tops, onion, tomatoes, cumin, coriander, and salt and pepper to taste. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the pepper and onion are soft and the tomatoes have cooked down, about 8 minutes.

Add the corn and the chipotle pepper, if using, with as much adobo sauce as clings to it. Stir to heat through.

Divide the mixture among the peppers, setting them in a baking dish just big enough to hold them, such as a pie plate or 8 x 8” pan. Loosely tent the peppers with aluminum foil, then bake for 20 minutes. Remove the foil, then bake another 10 minutes, or until the peppers are softened and the tops are browned.


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How do YOU pad thai?

Papa announced that he had a hankering for pad thai. Now, normally he and Mama would just order in Chinese, but for some reason, they decided to make it themselves.

If there were a signature dish to Thailand, this would be it. There are oodles of variations on it, but your basic components include rice noodles, tofu and/or shrimp, cooked egg, fish sauce, chilies, garlic, bean sprouts, cilantro, lime, and crushed peanuts—all done in the same wok. Often there’s carrot, scallion, basil, and tamarind in some form, as well.

Mama said I could be in charge of the noodles, but as they required being steeped in boiling water, she thought better of it, so off I went to play with my trains. Papa was in charge of chopping, while Mama made the sauce and got everything ready to go. When you stir-fry, you’re cooking over very high heat, so it goes quickly. If you start cooking, then stop to chop your garlic or mince your chilies, what’s in the wok will probably already be burned before you’re done. So get your mise en place together.

The first step is to cook your egg, as a kind of tiny, very flat omelet. First you lightly beat your egg, then when it hits the hot oil in the pan, you continue to beat it for about a minute before it starts to set. Once it’s cooked, remove it from the pan, slice it into thin strips, then add more oil to the wok. From there, you start to quickly cook your protein (cut into small pieces if it’s not tofu or shrimp); then remove it from the pan and then add your veggies. Follow with your sauce and your noodles, mixing it all up. Add back the egg and protein, and keep mixing everything. You want your noodles to absorb the yummy sauce and begin to fry a little bit. Then top with crushed peanuts and raw sprouts. Serve with wedges of lime.

You don’t have to use a wok, but the deep sides of the pan sure help to keep all the noodly goodness in one place.

Mama had the back of her mind on alternate dinners for me, so sure she was that I wouldn’t eat the pad thai. But since she opted to go without the chilies, there was nothing about this I didn’t like. Those springy noodles were great, and I really liked the egg! The crunch of peanut was nice, too. But you know… I felt it needed more lime. So I said so. “I need lime.” And the reward for my fledgling sentence was more lime. Mama also served a cucumber-soy-ginger salad on the side. I had one salty bite, but I preferred the pad thai. What can I say? I’m a simple guy.

Next to tastiness, these noodles were just plain fun to eat.

Love, Jude


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That’s amore!

To say that Mama ate a lot of pizza when she was pregnant with me would be an understatement. She tells me that one week, she ate it four times. That was when Papa told her, “I’ll be glad to get you a pizza tonight, but I just can’t eat it again.” Even without the pregnancy excuse, Mama continues to eat pizza at least once a week.

So shame on her for keeping it from me for as long as she did! While some people choose to believe pizza’s actually sort of good for you (wheat in the crust, tomatoes in the sauce, dairy in the cheese, and all those other veggies you choose to put on top), Mama’s more on the fence about it. At least as far as it concerns me, pizza is a junk food. But as I grew up, I began to notice this interesting food she and Papa were putting into their mouths. It smells delicious, it’s shaped like a triangle (that’s a shape I know!), and it’s covered in cheese. Little by little, Mama relented. She started by giving me the tiniest pieces cut from a slice…

Little did she know what kind of floodgates she was opening. I can now eat a (small) slice all by myself. Her favorite (and I suppose mine, too) has tomatoes and pineapple on it. Sometimes olives or mushrooms, too, but I’m not always keen on them. I never get to eat Papa’s slices, though. Mama says pepperoni is definitely not good for babies.

So Mama finally showed me how to make a pizza so that I didn’t think they all come in a box (no matter how fun those boxes are to play with). She said dough seems scarier than it is because of the yeast. (It must be worse than the furnace kicking on to be that scary.) I thought it would be more fun, but after it was mixed, the dough just sat in the mixing bowl, hiding under a towel all afternoon. That thing slept longer than I do! Mama turned on the oven and put her big heavy pizza stone on the bottom to get it good and hot (this is a word I’m learning).

Mama said it’s important to have all your ingredients ready before you get your dough out because things move quickly then. When she removed the towel from the mixing bowl, I was shocked to see that the dough had grown! She called it “proofed,” but it looked like a big puffy pillow to me. She pulled it out and started smacking it around. “This is the best part,” she said and she let me touch it too. It was kind of warm and oh-so-soft. She pulled the stone from the oven, set it on the stove, and then dusted it with cornmeal. (She noted semolina would also work fine, but we just happened to have cornmeal.)

Then she started flinging the dough between her hands! Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. The dough started stretching and sagging, and before I could say “Chicago style,” she flopped it onto the stone with a thwack. She patted it a few times to make a ridge around the edge, then she brushed the edge with olive oil and sprinkled it with garlic powder. She spooned lots of sauce around the middle, put our favorite toppings on it, then smothered it with mozzarella and parmesan. I couldn’t even see the pineapple there was so much cheese.

It only took about 10 minutes to bake, but we had to wait a long time before it was cool enough to eat. Something about a burning palate. All I know is I’ll take pizza any way I can get it.

Love, Jude

Once we cut into the pizza, there was no time to stop and take a picture. Be glad Mama paused to take this one.

Pizza Dough

2½–2¾ cups bread flour (mix in some whole wheat flour, if desired, but use 2¾ cups total)
1½ teaspoons salt
2 tablespoons olive oil
Scant tablespoon baking (active dry) yeast
1 cup warm water (ideally 105°–110°, but Mama says it just needs to be hot enough that it feels hot but that you don’t scald your finger)
Semolina or cornmeal
Pizza sauce, cheese, & toppings

Put the flour, salt, and olive oil in the bowl of an electric stand mixer. Separately, mix the yeast and water with a whisk until foamy. (Be sure you dissolve all the yeast.) Add to the mixer, and mix on low speed with the dough hook about 4 minutes, then on the next speed up for another 4 minutes. The dough will be slightly sticky. Remove the hook and cover the bowl with a towel. Let it sit for 3–4 hours, or until the dough is doubled in size (if you put it on your stove, the pilot light will make this process go a little faster). Pull it out of the bowl and give it a few kneads before shaping it.

Preheat oven to 500°. If you don’t have a pizza stone, liberally grease a cookie sheet before putting down the dough (otherwise, dust the stone). Spread out the dough, brush the edges with olive oil (optional), and top with desired sauce, cheese, and toppings. Mama says you can jazz up any store-bought sauce by sautéing some chopped onions and garlic and adding in a few fresh herbs. Bake for 10 minutes and enjoy. But watch you don’t burn your palate.


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It all started with vichyssoise…

…the idea for this blog, that is

At the market today, Mama spied some “beautiful leeks” and thought about what she could make with them. “I’m feeling uninspired today,” she sighed as she pushed the cart among the produce bins. Then she mumbled something about organic potatoes, plopped a bag of them in our cart, and an idea was born.

I haven’t been partial to potatoes. Garlicky, buttery, salty, fried, or even cooked in a pot pie… I just haven’t taken to them. Mama started me on locally grown, organic, mashed fingerlings last summer. This was before she read that you shouldn’t give young babies potatoes because they belong to the nightshade family. Or something like that. Perhaps my finickiness was a self-preservation technique. Not the first time, and it certainly won’t be the last, I’m sure.

So what made Mama think I’d like vichyssoise, or potato-leek soup, is beyond me. But made it she did. She showed me how to trim the leeks, using just the white and light green parts, then run them under the tap to rinse out any sand.

These leeks sure are dirty.

These leeks sure are dirty.

Then she sliced them into little half-moons (moon is one of the words I know!)…

The leeks don't have to be sliced too-too thinly. Stop when you get to the very green part.

The leeks don’t have to be sliced too-too thinly. Stop when you get to the very green part.

…and sautéed them in butter until they were soft, but not browned. She was adamant that they not brown, but still, some of them did.

Try to keep any color out of the leeks by gently sweating them.

Try to keep any color out of the leeks by gently sweating them.

So she deglazed the pot with homemade vegetable stock and scraped up any brown bits from the bottom. Once the stock was brought to a boil, she added the peeled and chopped potatoes and simmered them until they were soft. Then she took out a silly tool—a handheld blender! She whirred it through the soup, pureeing the vegetables until they were silky smooth. Some salt, pepper, and heavy cream to finish, and the soup was done.

Don't be intimidated. Mama made a quadruple batch for a soup swap. Doesn't it look silky?

Don’t be intimidated. Mama made a quadruple batch for a soup swap. Doesn’t it look silky?

Though vichyssoise is traditionally eaten cold, it is the middle of winter after all. Mama served it to me warm, and she let me sit at the table, instead of in my high chair. Papa supervised, since I’m sort of all thumbs with a spoon. The soup was delicious. Creamy, and slightly oniony, and even a bit potato-y, it was velvety and soft, like new fleece pajamas. I had two bowls, and Mama showed me how to sop up the last bits with a piece of bread. Yes, please!

Mama posted this photo on Facebook, to show what a big boy I’ve become, and a friend suggested I start a blog. Mama’s never been very keen on blogs, but she agreed to help me out (see above re: “all thumbs”). I hope you enjoy what’s to come…as I most surely will not! I’m a baby, and it’s my prerogative to not eat whatever is placed before me.

Love, Jude

Not only am I enjoying my first bites of vichyssoise, but I’m feeding myself with a spoon while sitting at the table. Such a big boy!

Vichyssoise (and yes, do pronounce the last “s”)

1 leek, rinsed and thinly sliced (use just the white portion for a “purer” soup)
1 Tbsp butter
1 qt veg or chicken stock
1 lb potatoes, peeled and rough chopped
1 c heavy cream
salt and pepper, to taste (use white for a “purer” look)
Garnish with chopped chives, if desired

In a Dutch oven or soup pot, sweat the leeks in the butter over medium heat until soft, stirring occasionally so as not to brown them. Deglaze the pot with the stock. Bring to a boil, add the potatoes, reduce heat, and simmer until the potatoes are soft. Puree in the pot with an imersion blender (or carefully in a blender) until smooth. Add the cream and seasonings. Serve cold or hot.

To make a more traditional vichyssoise (Mama’s vegetarian), omit the butter and cook a couple strips of bacon, cut into pieces, or lardons, with kitchen shears. Once fat has been rendered from the bacon, remove the bacon and cook the leeks in the fat. Crumble the bacon for garnish.

Yield: About 1½ quarts