Tina To Table

After securing my half loaf of bread on Sunday afternoon, I came home and dunked one piece in olive oil with salt, a true test of a breads ability to stand up on its own. On Monday, I woke up and it was pouring. I mean, raining buckets, and while the birds chirped, the sky was dark. I found sunshine in making turmeric hummus, bright, golden, spicy and exactly what the day needed to alleviate darkness and welcome the possibility of light. I recalled a curried couscous mom used to make as a summer side and took those flavor profiles and melded some of them into a salad. Lunch would be bright, spicy, sweet, crunchy and make full use of the immersion blender that I packed with me and took to Mexico as my faithful cooking companion .

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My love affair with bread began at a young age. It began sneaky, not seductively, but was it ever a grand and true love. Our house was always full of bread. Seeded loaves of semonlina, sliced bishop, loaves of Italian bread stowed away in the freezer, you know, just in case. There were bagels every Sunday after church, big, fat, doughy and round. The perfect specimen for butter and dipping; or both. My brother Louis and I would enter the house, rip the warm, semi-wet paper bag of bagels open and walk to the refrigerator to take out the Breakstone’s whipped butter. We’d each break our bagels open, by hand, uncivilized midget Italian heathen children, and stick the knife with a wad of butter right in the center. CHOMP. We would devour our buttered bagels and then take another, split it in half, and dunk it in the Sunday gravy when mom left the kitchen. We couldn’t get enough.

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I'm not writing about this meal because I expect you to cook it. I mean, if you want to, please, go ahead. I placed the recipe all the way at the bottom. But this is really a tale of how I broke my own heart. About how I allowed myself to believe that a man would change his mind about me. Sad, I know, but pretty common - I think. And after we spent the weekend cooking, I lied to myself again and again. Three more times, in fact. But after that I was done, at least with the cooking part. To this day, I have never cooked with or for another man.
Here is our story. The story of how I lied to my heart, believed, cooked and burned myself. But my God, was the food we made together delicious. There was more than this timpano and, little by little, I’ll write those food stories too.

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It’s been hot. So hot. So hot that cooking has been a chore, but I knew I needed to really settle in down and make something besides eggs. Sorry, eggs, you’ll always be the perfect food  but I’m ready to sweat for my meals. I think. Because of the heat, the walk up Cosijopi to Mercado Sanchez Pascuas didn’t seem like the best idea for my grocery haul and I was craving fish, which took me to Mercado de la Merced. Mercado de la Merced is a flat, close, 7 minute walk from my apartment and, bonus, it’s across the street from Marisqueria El Mulle - which is where I buy fish. I hadn’t been to Merced simply because I go to markets for different reasons, but I’ll get into that in another post. 

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Often, the easiest way to walk back to myself, to walk back home, is through a market and into the kitchen. Sometimes, I don’t think there isn’t a single, solitary thing that a soft, runny egg, cannot cure. It’s been quite a month of change, having given up my apartment in New York City. I’m one of those rotten Brooklynites who left Brooklyn, fell hard for Queens, and never looked back. Now I’m one of those rotten former Queens dwellers who woke up in Oaxaca Mexico, as planned, for a 3.5 month trip. But I had no idea, in January, when I booked the ticket to Oaxaca, that I’d no longer have a home in NYC as of today.

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Today is Easter Sunday - and I’m also approaching the one year anniversary of my re-constructed rack. So, it was only right to share tonight’s dinner with Channon - as she’s one of the many women who was there when I needed help the most. My boobs are tops, in my book, but they’re not meant for glazing or roasting.
So, the only other rack for me is - you guessed it - that of a lamb. Give it to me pink, and let me suck on the bones until there’s no flavor left.  Then, let me go in for one more gnaw - just to be sure I didn’t miss a stray bit of meat. At Easter, lamb was our thing, and I waited all year for it. Kinda how a kid waits for Santa Clause, that’s how I waited for lamb.

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Easter holds a happy place in my heart.  No, not because I was the fat kid and my family would give me fruit baskets instead of chocolate to open up (every Easter morning for a number of years) that was terrible and traumatic. But because Easter - in our home - was celebrated with an all out protein party. We’re talking salamis, provolone, ricotta salata, hard boiled eggs, lamb and or goat. I still recall sitting in church, in my too tight and too pastel Easter costume - scalp itching from some stupid straw bonnet - with a bow, of course - fantasizing about young spring goat and lamb and how tasty and tender they are.  I was 9. What kind of 9 year old fantasizes about goat meat covered in wine, eggs, cheese and peas? 

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If there’s anything that takes me back to the Easter Sunday’s of my past, it’s Pizza Rustica. Pizza Rustica is a traditional Italian meat pie.  Imagine quiche lorraine on crack.  Or as Mindy Saraco, pork and cheese aficionado, put it: Pizza Rustica is like Lard Bread on steroids.  Lard Bread is meat and cheese stuffed bread and this is its dirty baked pie counterpart.  Imagine a cured meat and cheese cornucopia which includes: prosciutto, sopressata, boiled ham, pancetta, provolone, ricotta salata, locatelli, mozzarella and ricotta – all baked into a buttery homemade pastry shell (with 12 eggs to bind all the goodness together– in the pie and to your arteries).  There are variations on the meat combinations (and the cheese too), but I went with what I remembered.  

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One of my favorite meals, when prepared correctly, is a salad. Yes, read that again. Salad is one of my favorite meals. Notice I didn’t write appetizer or lunch. No. I make salads into meals. In my single woman world of eating, salads continue to be an accessible DINNER that can be fully loaded with flavor and creativity, and I am truly sorry if you don’t see them that way. Please keep in mind that I’m not talking romaine or iceberg lettuce, though they do have their place in my heart and stomach, but I’m talking about various types of kale, arugula, chard, escarole - all of the different and unique greens you can imagine - tossed into a salad.

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I’d like to start with a disclaimer: If you want the cookie, eat the damn cookie. I think all is fair in love, food and balance. My sweet treat ideas are meant to be nourishing as well, providing alternatives to cookies, cakes and pastries. The below sweet treats are loaded with fiber, magnesium, potassium, high in Vitamin B, antioxidants, protein and healthy fats - all perfect for PMS balance, perimenopausal monster mode and more. I like simple solutions for a sweet tooth and ones that will pack a punch against how I’m feeling. Comparison is the death of joy, and these are not cookies, nor can they replace cookies. But they can, however, replace nutrients your body may be missing or craving during the month.

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The thread that has always woven our family story together was, and probably always will be, food. From the planning of meals, to grocery shopping, scoring a sale on escarole or broccoli rabe - this is where my mom and I meet. Growing up, food was our shared love language. Mealtime was common ground in a home where broken English was spoken and where my grandmother threw shoes at my grandfather in fiery frustration and anger when he was being stubborn or mean. But, mostly, we gathered in love. Even if food was something that made me feel shameful and embarrassed, it was the method of joy, source and maybe even our connection to God.

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If you know me, you know that I love my vegetables. Vegetables can be transformative to our daily health from a nutrition standpoint, but what about from a creativity standpoint? There is nothing I love more than to look at a veggie and imagine a new way to enjoy it. Veggies provide a colorful baseline for food art, plain and simple. There are so many shows on tv, and online, making food art out of giant sandwiches and 99 ingredient recipes - all of which usually contain cream or a can of something.

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I normally chat with my mom every other night.  Chats we have while I make my dinner, or after I've already assumed the position on my couch.  Talking to my mom is like comfort food, and as I was lying across my chaise lounge, outfitted in my classic Valentine's Day pajama bottoms and a wife beater, I asked my mom, “What were you doing when you were 32?” At the age of 32, Evelyn Grace Corrado had already had 3 children and, in full disclosure, I go numb from the waist down every time I think about this.

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Roasting a sweet potato brings out its deep coloring and its candy like, caramel like syrup. The residue left on the foil after its bake is tacky to the touch; a sweet syrup that is only revealed when it is properly loved. Yesterday’s roasted sweet potatoes became tonights veggie taco dinner with an egg on top. The sweet potato, much like me, is simply awaiting proper love and care.

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You see, last week a friend came to visit and I thought I’d whip up a batch of cookies because what guest wouldn’t love to walk into an apartment filled with the aroma of freshly baked cookies. But, the truth is, I didn’t do an ingredient check. I simply assumed because I’m me, I’d be prepared. Wrong. The chocolate was a mistake in this recipe or, rather, it was a cover for a missing ingredient.

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For years I have been singing the praises of the spaghetti squash. Ok, not because I really think it tastes and substitutes as actual spaghetti because, let’s be honest, nothing compares to soft, glutenous, fork twirls of real spaghetti and the satisfied fullness it gives the mouth and belly in one swoop of a bite. BUT, the spaghetti squash has its own value and lusciousness that might be missed when you look at it IF you’re not familiar with it. It truly is a beautiful

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I arrived home from yoga class at 10pm to a grumbling belly.  I usually don't work myself to the point of hunger pangs, as I can often be found snacking - an almond here, a cherry there, a dark chocolate square in the purse, a sip of green juice - I'm rarely cornered without provisions.  Admittedly, I don’t have many groceries left because it’s the end of the week, and I’ll need to make a trip to the store, but not until the weekend.

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Sometimes I let my squashes sit. That’s right, I buy a lot of squashes and roots because they hold up for a long time without rotting so long as they’re stored correctly in a cool, dry place. They start off on my window sill and then usually migrate to a large stainless steel bowl, where they are gently laid to rest with a cozy towel on top. From here they are placed in a cabinet and they wait.

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