For A Bolder Fall

It may be summer in other parts of the country, but fall has come to Indianapolis swiftly and decisively. It’s here to stay. I’m excited to break out my leather jacket and start exercising my boot collection once again, but the arrival of fall always makes me stop short at my nail polish drawer. I like bold nail colors to match my bold personality (OK, that was cheesy and a lie. I like them because they complement my skin tone): bright pastels and neons, darkest-dark shades and of course, glittery metallics. You’ll be hard pressed to find any of those on the fashion blogs’ “10 Best Nail Colors for Fall.” Instead, fall brings with it more muted nail colors. “Nude” and “neutral” have to be the most frequently-used terms in beauty at this time of year. So I stay true to myself by mixing these moodier tones with some of my favorite bold polishes. This does involve a little nail art.

Now don’t go running off. Nail art is not dead, but it is a little bit time consuming (seriously who has time for stuff like this???). I’m in grad school, so trust me, I don’t have time. This is why I try to mix up polishes while keeping the technique simple. An accent nail or an easy pattern you can paint with a normal brush and some toothpicks (since I’m in grad school, I also don’t have money for fancy nail art tools) does the trick. My first fall look of the season just involves aiming your brush a little bit:

For this look, I used an old nude from Forever 21 (any neutral will do) and a black, multidimensional glitter from Julep. After painting on my nude color, I added a few light strokes of the glitter polish just at the top of my nail — no tools or extra drying time needed. Any light neutral paired with a clear-based dark glitter can get you this faux French-tipped look and add some edginess to your manicure as you welcome fall, however reluctantly.

A Taste of Honey

I feel in love with honey in Paris this summer. Yes, you read that right — I didn’t fall for a gorgeous man or even the city of Paris itself (I’m partial to cities where I speak the language), but sweet, viscous honey. I’ve always kept a jar in my pantry to add to tea when I’m sick or to the occasional recipe that calls for a teaspoon of it, but after visiting Paris, my honey collection and appreciation has soared.

It started at the home of my hosts, who were Paris locals, at breakfast time. Breakfast consisted of bread or brioche with spreads (the French love spreads) — butter, almond butter, strawberry jam, and of course, honey. But their honey wasn’t like any I’d ever tasted. It was soft and woody, rather than bold and tangy like the packaged honey I was used to. At expressing my infatuation with it, my hosts marched me right down the street to Les Abeilles (The Bees) a quaint shop packed from floor to ceiling with glass jars of different sizes and different shades of amber nectar. The shop owner allowed me to taste as many as I pleased, yet somehow I showed self-restraint, returning to the states with just three unique flavors: Maritime Lavender, Forest and Chestnut (this is the soft, woody one I was talking about).

Les Abeilles; Photo credit: Yelp

Once I got home, I had to find a recipe that would put my new honey to good use. I found a recipe for a sweet, summer flatbread at the Indiana State Fair and adjusted it to my liking. It was so good that I made it twice in the same week! The perfected recipe below is for one personal flatbread pizza, or hors d’oeuvres for two. Feel free to double or triple to fit your need and enjoy… quick, before summer is over!

HONEY BAKED FLATBREAD PIZZA

INGREDIENTS:

Dough
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 Tbsp honey
2 1/2 Tbsp hot water
2 Tbsp cold water
2 Tbsp vegetable oil

Toppings
1 Tbsp honey
1/2 tsp olive oil
1/4 cup shredded or crumbled white cheese (I’ve used roquefort, white cheddar and mozzarella)
1/4 – 1/2 cup of chopped or sliced summer vegetables (e.g. onion, zucchini, tomato, bell peppers, spinach)

INSTRUCTIONS:

Preheat over to 400 degrees.

In food processor bowl, mix flour, baking powder and salt. In separate bowl, combine hot water and 1 Tbsp honey well. In a third bowl, combine cold water and oil.

With the machine running, pour hot water/honey mixture into the food processor bowl. Add the cold water/oil mixture with machine on and process until dough forms a ball. If dough does not form a ball, slowly add droplets of water until it does.

(If you don’t have a food processor, whisk water mixtures into dry ingredients until small balls form. Then use hands to mix and knead dough.)

Turn out dough onto a floured surface and knead for evenness adding additional flour or water if necessary until dough is soft, but not sticky. Roll dough into 1/4 inch thickness and place on cookie sheet or pizza stone.

Drizzle 1 tablespoon of honey and 1/2 tsp olive oil onto dough. Spread vegetables* and cheese over the honey and olive oil. Bake for 12-15 minutes or until dough is lightly browned on the bottom edges.

*If using spinach or another green, add to flatbread two minutes before end of cook time.

 

The Best Chocolate Chip Cookies Ever (Seriously)

If you don’t like Nutella, you can stop reading now (What else do you hate? Beyoncé? Sunshine? Having fun?). But, if you’re like me — a Nutella enthusiast — hold on to your seat because I am about to change your life and the lives of those you bake for. I found this recipe on The Zoe Report of all places — the blog that I follow to admire clothes I won’t be able to afford for another 20 years. The holidays were coming up so I had more free time on my hands and more dessert-hungry family members to satiate. Both came in handy since this recipe ended up taking several hours (3-4 depending on how many cookie sheets you have) and making 40-45 cookies. Several members of my extended family, who are as brutally honest as they are difficult to please, actually said, “These are the best chocolate chip cookies I’ve ever had.” I thought they were mocking me. Then I had one.

The summer before I left home for college, my mother tried to teach me how to cook. I refused to partake in the “lessons” she tried to corral me into after asking a little to nicely if I was having dinner at home. One night, after a failed attempt at getting me to handle a raw chicken, she was exasperated. “How are you going to live on your own without knowing how to cook?” she asked. “Just get me a cookbook,” I said. I can read instructions.”

Now I know better. Most of the time, recipes should be a guide, not a rule book. This one is an exception. If you can read the instructions below and follow them, you can make the best chocolate chip cookies ever. But if you can’t wait for the dough to chill for two hours, or use the measuring spoons to scoop out the proper dough-to-Nutella ratio, you will make just average cookies. Follow the recipe. It’s better than us. It’s divine.

INGREDIENTS:

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/4 tsps baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
2 sticks butter
1 1/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg + 1 egg yolk
1 1/2 tsps vanilla extract
1 Tbsp plain greek yogurt
1 3/4 cup chocolate chips (I used semi-sweet)
13 oz jar of Nutella, chilled in the refrigerator (for 6+ hours)
Coarse sea/kosher salt for sprinkling

INSTRUCTIONS:

Melt butter in a saucepan over medium heat. Whisk until it browns slightly, then transfer to a bowl. While it cools, whisk together flour, baking soda and salt in a separate bowl.

With an electric mixer, mix the melted butter and sugars until thoroughly blended. Beat in the egg, yolk, vanilla and yogurt until combined. Add the dry ingredients slowly and beat on low speed until well-combined. Fold in the chocolate chips.

Chill the dough for 2 hours in the refrigerator.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Measure 1 1/2 Tbsps of chilled dough and flatten it into the palm of your hand. Place 1 tsp of chilled Nutella in the middle and fold the dough around it. Gently roll it into a ball sealing the dough over the Nutella center. Then, place onto a cookie sheet.

Bake for 9-11 minutes. Transfer the cookies to a rack or platter to cool and sprinkle with coarse salt while still warm.

Teaching Moments

I may have been exaggerating a bit when I said “no recipes allowed.” Okay, I may have been exaggerating a lot. It’s not that I don’t use recipes; it’s just that I don’t like to depend on them. But let’s face it: I don’t know how to cook everything. So, when I want to try something new (at least once a week), I have to crack open the cookbook. Every once in a while though, I stumble upon a recipe that sounds so delicious, it inspires me. I had one of those moments about a year ago while browsing San Francisco’s 7×7. They have a segment called “Secret Recipe” where they reveal a recipe for a dish at a favorite Bay Area restaurant. This recipe combined two of my favorite foods: crab and Mac n’ Cheese.

A year later (yes, I really kept this recipe in my back pocket for a year) I happened to be thinking about the approaching crab season when my friend pinged me asking to come over for a cooking lesson. It was Crab Mac n’ Cheese fate! While a restaurant quality dish isn’t the best for a beginner cooking lesson, this bake-less recipe is surprisingly simple and also had a few teaching moments:

1) Leeks: What the hell is a leek? It sounds like a bloodsucking worm, but fortunately, it’s just an onion-like vegetable. Use the green part the way you’d use a green onion and the white part the way you’d use a yellow onion.

2) “Sweat”: This is a fancy way of saying, “cook the vegetables at a low temperature so they soften but don’t turn brown, or caramelize”. When you cook onions (or leeks) at high temperatures, they release natural sugars and become sweet (hence the name, “caramelize”). Sweating onions and other tough, crunchy vegetables gives them a cooking head-start while slowly releasing flavors into the greater recipe. Sweat vegetables at a barely sizzling or reduce the heat to a simmer and cover if you are working with a large quantity.

3) Roux & Béchamel: Like many sauces cooked on the stove, this recipe starts with a roux – a thick base of equal parts butter and flour. When making a roux ensure that the butter does not sizzle and cook off (evaporate). You need as much liquid butter as possible to remain in the pan to soak up the flour and make a smooth paste, so melt it at a low temperature. A roux is easily made a Béchamel — sometimes called “white sauce” — by adding milk. When you see this fancy name on a menu, it’s just butter, flour and milk in the ratio of one tablespoon to one tablespoon to one cup. The trick to a well-made Béchamel is to remove the roux from heat and slowly stir in the milk until it’s well-mixed. Then, turn the heat back on and stir to thicken the sauce.

True to my “no recipes” mantra, I strayed from the directions a bit, cooking down the liquid for about 5-10 minutes more than the recipe called for and adding more cheese and seasoning. It could also use more crab if you’re into that (’tis the season!). Finally, beware of the serving size. The recipe says it serves 6 to 8; it must mean 6 to 8 hungry bears. This recipe cut in half serves 10-12 hungry women.

“There is nothing more tragic than to sleep through a revolution.”

On Thursday, I went to a hosted lecture by Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. I’d heard of her book before the lecture and knew that it condemned the unprecedented mass incarceration of blacks in the United States. I also knew that she had to be either insane or enlightened to equate any 21st-century American institution to the segregation laws of the Jim Crow era. Turns out, she’s the latter.

Here is what I didn’t know before the lecture:

• More blacks are incarcerated today than were enslaved when the Emancipation Proclamation was signed.
• A black child born today has less of a chance of being raised by two parents than a black child born during slavery (Alexander suggests that this is due in part to the disproportionate number of black males incarcerated today).
• In just 30 years, between 1980 and 2010, the number of people incarcerated in the United States quintupled from around 300,000 to over 2 million.
• Calculations of U.S. unemployment and poverty rates don’t include the 2 million+ people incarcerated (Think of what minority poverty rates would look like if the 1 million+ incarcerated blacks and Latinos were counted!)
• While the U.S. incarceration rate has soared over the last 30 years to become the world’s highest, the crime rate has fluctuated, and today, is at one of its lowest points.

These statistics alone floored me, but then, Alexander began to cite the laws and policies that make it nearly impossible for ex-felons to re-acclimate into society. These people are lawfully discriminated against in public housing applications and for employment opportunities, and in some places, are even banned from receiving food stamps. Hundreds of professional licenses are unavailable to them (including a barber’s license in some states). The check box on most job applications makes them virtually unemployable. “What do we expect them to do?”, Alexander asked.

I could write pages about the discriminatory and unjust policies of our criminal justice system that I was introduced to on Thursday night, and similarly, Alexander told us that she could talk about them all night. However, she wanted to allot some of her lecture time to talk about solutions, the first of which suggested that we challenge our individual attitudes and beliefs about ex-felons. “We’re all criminals,” she said. “Even if the worst thing you’ve ever done is drive 10 miles per hour above the speed limit on the freeway, you’ve put more people in danger than someone smoking marijuana on the corner.” Bleeding-heart? Probably. True? Absolutely. Suddenly, I was caught in moral, internal conflict. I was drinking the Kool-Aid and hanging on her every word before I realized that I was the problem. I was the one discriminating against these people and treating them as the other, as lesser than me. But I’m guilty too. Ex-felons are just the ones that got caught. So, how do we challenge prejudicial attitudes that are so deeply entrenched in us by society and perceived “logic?” I’m not yet certain, but I sure as hell will work to figure it out.

Early in her lecture, Alexander quoted Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1965 speech at Oberlin College: “There are all too many people who, in some great period of social change, fail to achieve the new mental outlooks that the new situation demands. There is nothing more tragic than to sleep through a revolution.”

Like most people, I was asleep to the mass incarceration of blacks in the United States and the targeted, discriminatory policies that led to it. I’m just waking up now, just getting out of bed, but I’m not tired anymore. I’m not going back to sleep.

No Recipes Allowed

Last week, one of my best friends asked me to teach her how to cook. I’d been sharing my nightly meals on Instagram, and I suppose she was inspired to hone her own skills in the kitchen. As someone who is passionate about cooking and teaching independently, I thought this was the best social event anyone had ever suggested. I immediately came up with a plan: each week she picks a dish, I pick a bottle of wine, and after a quick trip to the grocery store, we get to work in her kitchen. There is only one rule for our weekly lesson: no recipes allowed.

I’m a firm believer that the only ingredients you need to prepare a great meal are the ability to follow instructions, a little creativity and taste buds. But to become a competent cook, you need the confidence to cook without a recipe, just common sense and your sense of taste. My friend is smart; she can read a recipe. But she’s asked me to teach her how to cook. Teaching means giving her the tools she needs to feel confident creating her own dish without instruction. It means basic training in food science and preparation. It means that I advise, rather than direct as a recipe does. Most importantly, it means no recipes.

This week, we made butternut squash curry. Curry is a little more advanced than I would have liked to start with, but it is one of her favorite foods and offered a great lesson that complex dishes can be prepared with common pantry items. For a simple dry curry, try a can of chicken or vegetable broth with 1/2 a teaspoon of nutmeg, cinnamon, cayenne and paprika. Include your preferred filling (lentils, veggies, chicken, etc.) and cook the broth down to your desired dryness. Add more spices to taste. Break free of the recipe!