Godly Treats

A few weeks ago I found myself walking through Hamden, and I passed a bakery called Godly Treats. As I am tolerant of all religions that provide me food, I went in, where a very nice woman greeted me and told me I could have a free taste of anything I wanted. I went home with a bean pie ("Have you ever had one before?" they asked me) and the belief that the place was run by the Nation of Islam. Nope! It's run by the United Nation of Islam, a group "which is a separate and non related entity than the similar sounding 'Nation of Islam.'" I can't make too much fun of them because their bean pie was really good. It was like a pumpkin pie made with mashed up navy beans instead of pumpkin. In fact, I'm sure I could have passed it off as pumpkin pie. If I'm ever in Kansas City, I'll go to their restaurant, Your Diner, "A Place For Us To Develop Ideas And Enjoy Wholesome And Delicious Food In An Environment Of Righteousness."

Yes, this is a weird organization.

Honey and Caraway

It's not often that I taste something while it's cooking and it's bad. It's not that I have some extraordinary skill; it's just hard to cook good ingredients and make them bad. It was worrisome, then, to taste cabbage in the process of cooking and have it be as bad as it was. (It was actually a lot like the cabbage I cooked in Hungary, which Joel tried and wisely refused to eat.)

Since I don't usually write about my failures, you've probably guessed that it was good in the end. And yes, after I added more salt, honey, and mustard, it was delicious. So don't be discouraged if it's a bland, watery mess when you first taste it. Honey fills in most of the gaps, and mustard fills in the rest. This makes 4-6 servings and takes about an hour.

• 1 medium head red cabbage
• 1 onion
• 1 tbs. caraway seeds
• 1 lemon
• 3-4 tbs. honey
• mustard to taste (1-2 tbs., I think)
• butter or oil or both
• salt, pepper

Dice the onion and fry over medium-low heat in the butter or oil with some salt in a big pot. As it cooks, cut up the cabbage. When it's soft, after five minutes or so, add the caraway seeds and stir. After another minute, add the cabbage, some salt, and a little bit of water (less than 1/4 cup), and cover the pot. Stir occasionally, and add more water as necessary if the pot dries out. When the cabbage has started to soften, add the juice from the lemon. Add the honey a little bit at a time and stop when the balance is right. (My measurements are all approximate--next time I'll try to make them more exact.) Cook until the cabbage is soft, which takes a long time. When it's ready, add the mustard and taste. You'll probably want to add a bit more honey, since the sweetness goes nicely with the mustard. Mix in some pepper and serve.

Squash Ravioli

I would have blogged about this much sooner, but I was still too emotional about it to risk it. I didn't want to ruin a perfect thing by talking about it. But I've come to accept that I have nowhere to go but down, and now I can talk about the squash ravioli that were the pinnacle of my culinary existence. Yes, they were good. Oh, and Giovanna did all the work in making them. I just, umm, supervised. Many thanks to Mark Bittman. This serves four and takes forever.

The filling:

• 1 medium-sized butternut squash
• 2 eggs
• nutmeg (a lot)
• salt, pepper
• 1 tsp. sugar
• 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese

Cut the squash into inch-thick slices, remove the seeds, and cut off the peel. Put a bit of olive oil on a baking pan and put the slices on this, and put a bit of olive oil on top. Sprinkle salt and pepper over the squash. Bake until soft (30-45 minutes) in a 400 degree oven. Put the slices in a bowl and mash. When the squash has cooled a bit, mix in all the other ingredients. Taste and adjust seasoning.

The dough:

• 2 1/2 cups flour, about
• 1 tsp. salt
• 4 eggs

Mix the flour and salt in a bowl and crack an egg in. Beat the egg and mix it up, and repeat with the other eggs. The mixture should seem much too dry, but pick it up and knead it a bit. If it's still too dry, add water a tiny bit at a time, but it shouldn't need it. Roll the dough out as thin as you can into a giant strip---this will take a while---and cut it in half. Put the filling onto the first half in little mounds, spaced properly apart. (How far apart? One ravioli-distance, I guess.) Brush or drizzle water in the spaces between the filling; this will make the dough stick. Take the top sheet, put it on top, and press it against the bottom sheet where it comes together (i.e., press between the mounds of filling). Cut out individual ravioli. Do all of this on a lightly floured surface to keep things from sticking, and don't pile ravioli on top of each other. (You could probably get away with it if you dust flour on, but why go to that trouble?) Pour them into a big pot of boiling, salted water and cook till done (six minutes, maybe), giving it a gentle stir every now and then. While you're doing that, make the sauce:

• olive oil
• fresh sage, minced
• garlic (I didn't use this, but I think it would be good)
• salt

Heat the olive oil on medium-low. Add the sage, garlic, and a little bit of salt. Don't burn the sage.