5 second rule

A barely contained effervescence.

She bubbles.

I don't know how else to express it, but my friend Jess Goldman Foung bubbles and bounces, her energy so all-consuming, and so contagious, that after I meet up with her I feel buzzed. Do you know people like this?  People whose very being shines so bright they make the air a few degrees warmer? She's a lit match, a jolt of caffeine, a prism that shoots rainbows through a room.

And the thing is, the crazy thing is, Jess was really sick, way before I met her. When she was a 21-year-old student at Stanford, she landed in the hospital with a Lupus diagnosis so severe her kidneys had basically shut down. As a college senior, while her friends were studying and going to parties, she was in full-on renal failure. 

Jess writes in her new cookbook:

"I could have functioned as a 21-year-old, on dialysis, waiting on the transplant list. But that wasn't the life I wanted to live. I was attached to machines every three days for three to four hours at a time, and while I was happy to be alive, I longed to be free."

So, what did she do?

In addition to receiving excellent medical care from her team at Stanford Hospital, Jess chose to radically change her diet. She cut out sodium from all non-natural (processed) sources and slashed her intake of foods whose natural sodium levels were simply too high. She focused on reversing her destiny. She got educated, and she started educating others.

Sodium Girl's Limitless Low-Sodium Cookbook barely contains Jess's bubbly personality. I feel her energy on every page, and I marvel at how she has created low-sodium recipes that are fun, joyful, and celebratory.

The balsamic blueberry steak sauce I've made twice now (pictured above) is a perfect case in point. I don't eat much steak, so I paired the sauce with some middle eastern lamb meatballs, fragrant with cinnamon, cumin, clove, and allspice -- like kofte, but round. I left out the salt to be true to Jess's spirit, and because I wanted to see if the sauce would be boldly-flavored enough to compensate for what I worried might be bland, no-salt-added meatballs.

With balsamic vinegar, molasses, brown sugar, and blueberries, the sauce had flavor to spare.

My boys swept those meatballs through that sauce, swirling them around and around, then licked the platter clean. Robust, brightly-hued, balanced, beautiful, the sauce filled our bellies and lifted our spirits.

It was Jess on a plate.

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If you or anyone you know must follow a reduced-sodium diet, please check out this cookbook. The recipes make over high-sodium favorites (ketchup, green bean casserole, buffalo wings, bloody marys, French onion soup) and also offer modern, new dishes (like pistachio and broccoli pesto-crusted salmon, beet carpaccio towers, ricotta with pumpkin crumbs) as well.

If you don't (yet) actively limit your sodium consumption (I don't, generally) but you do have any other health or dietary challenges, I also recommend it. Jess's voice will empower you and lift you up.

Jess also publishes the Sodium Girl blog, which offers free recipes, tips, and practical information on low-sodium living. (She just gave away a Vitamix; alas, I missed the deadline to encourage you to enter, so I basically owe you all a Vitamix.) There are also links to several other recipes from or inspired by the book, including this post about Jess on Foodie Crush, which is completely adorable.

Finally, it bears mentioning that Jess is only 30 years old. While she writes about a dietary lifestyle more often associated with older adults, her youthful perspective truly sets this book apart.

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Recipe for Balsamic Blueberry Sauce

This is a very close adaptation of Jessica Goldman Foung's balsamic blueberry steak sauce from Sodium Girl's Limitless Low-Sodium Cookbook (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013). All ingredients and quantities are hers; I've simply adapted the technique and hit it with some lemon.

This sauce partners beautifully with lamb meatballs (or kofte), or any kind of cheeseless meatball for that matter. (Jess has a pork and quinoa meatball in her book that looks great.)

Makes 1- to 1-1/2 cups sauce

1 teaspoon olive oil
2 garlic cloves, minced
1/4 onion, diced (she uses Vidalia; I used a yellow Spanish onion)
6 tablespoons balsamic (not the fancy kind)
2 tablespoons dark brown sugar
4 teaspoons honey
2 teaspoons molasses
2 cups blueberries (I used frozen, unthawed)
Lemon juice, to brighten at the end 

In a small saucepan, saute the garlic and onion over medium heat until softened, about 5 minutes. Stir in all the remaining ingredients. 

Bring the sauce to a boil. Reduce heat to very low, cover partly, and simmer gently for about 10 minutes. Uncover, raise heat, and let bubble vigorously until the sauce just starts to thicken and the berries are easy to mash with a potato masher, about 12 minutes, stirring frequently so the sauce doesn't scorch. Remove from the heat.

At this point, I squeezed in a few drops of fresh lemon juice to brighten all the flavors. I also pureed the sauce right in the pot with an immersion blender. Do this very carefully. (Depending on the size of your pot, the sauce level may be too low for you to do this successfully and safely.) Please do not let it splash on you.

Allow the sauce to cool for a good 15 minutes, or longer, before serving. As it cools, it sets up and jells, much like a jam. Then you can enjoy it at warm room temperature. Otherwise, refrigerate, covered, for a few hours to thicken further.

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Fig Pistachio Brown Butter: it's all good.

Go grab some bread. It's for toast. (For later.)

Or you could do what I did and make the challah in Sarabeth's Bakery: From My Hands to Yours by Sarabeth Levine. But only if you really feel like making challah. Plain jane toast will do, as will an English muffin, or a muffin of indeterminate national origin. Even a dry, stale cracker will do. You know what will not do? Nothing. Move on.

Now fetch your food processor, a small, light-colored skillet, a bowl, and a kettle. Get some butter, pistachios, dried figs, and salt. We're going to play. And then you're going to eat.

Brown some butter. Don't wander off, or you'll end up with soot. Just brown some butter, and pay attention to it. Watch it foam. Listen to it cackle and spit. After it's got some mojo, dial your heat way down so the popping subsides and the butter stops flailing.

You are a watchman, a sentinel. In your robe or your pajamas or your suit or your fancy watchman's outfit with the embroidered lapel, you have one task and one task only: don't let the butter burn. Okay, you have two tasks: don't let it burn, and give the pan a calm swirl every now and again.

When it's brown -- and by brown, I don't mean tan, taupe, amber, or, god forbid, beige -- pull your skillet. It should smell like success.

Now take a breath. The hard part's over.

The rest is easy. Soak the figs and pistachios in boiling water. Let them hang out while your brown butter cools. You can take a quick shower at this point, or check your Twitter feed to see if it's National Nilla Wafer day or whatever. Nothing's going to happen until you get back. Make your bed. Make my bed. 

Pour off the liquid. Then blitz the hell out of the nuts and figs, adding in a hefty pinch of sea salt and streaming in the brown butter towards the end. It will all come together. It will look like comfort, with jade flecks. 

Now you can make your toast. Or slice your challah. Or get out your sad, stale cracker.

It's all good now.

It's all good.

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Recipe for Fig Pistachio Brown Butter

Makes 2 cups 

6 tablespoons unsalted butter
8 ounces dried figs, stemmed and rough-chopped
1 cup unsalted pistachios
Sea salt

Brown the butter in a small saucepan. (To brown butter, melt in a small skillet over medium heat until it bubbles and foams. Reduce the to low and cook slowly for a good 10-15 minutes, watching carefully and swirling the pan now and again to prevent burning. You want a "nutty" brown color and aroma when you're done.) Remove from the heat and let cool slightly.

Meanwhile, place the figs and pistachios in a medium bowl or 32-ounce, lipped glass measuring cup. Add boiling water to cover (about 2 cups). Cover tightly with plastic wrap and let stand 20 minutes. Pour off the liquid.

Transfer the figs and pistachios to a food processor fitted with the metal blade. Add a generous pinch (or two) of salt. Process until finely ground and sticky. With the machine running, slowly stream in all the brown butter, scraping in all the lovely bits. Continue processing until the mixture comes together and looks thick, sticky, cohesive, and wonderful. Transfer to a bowl or jar.

Use immediately. (Store any leftovers, covered, in the refrigerator. For best spreadability, return to room temperature before serving.)

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A small dream, but a dream nonetheless.

Do you ever wonder how you got to where you are? How you ended up in the town you live in, with the career you have? Were you someone who always had a plan, and if so, was the blueprint you mapped out in your head the same one you ended up following?

Look, I got married young. Colin and I met in college, and within a few years we were hitched.

And from the very beginning, one thing that has always amazed me about him is how he can see his own future. He's a big thinker, with grand dreams, and each day he wakes up, and with boundless energy and an endless sense of both possibility and wonder, he barrels towards that vision. I find it remarkable, really.

Me? Ah. I'm different. I can't see two steps in front of me. I reach towards some nebulous goal, veer off, course-correct, feel satisfied, feel dissatisfied, and spin around. This makes me, in Colin's words, "interesting."

I'm goal-oriented, in many respects, but I've never really dreamed "ahead."

So I take one day at a time. One project at a time. One small, baby step at a time.

Recently, I wanted to make jam.

It was a tiny dream, perhaps, but I could see it, right there in front of me.

And that was something.

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Recipe for Apricot Vanilla Anisette Jam

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to go cherry and apricot picking. I came home with a ridiculous number of cherries (have you checked out the What's Ripe Right Now Group lately? It's swelling!) and a bag heavy with Blenheim apricots. The apricots sat in the fridge for about a week, mellowing, waiting for me to stop fawning over the cherries, which finally, finally, I did.

The apricot jam in Kim Boyce's Good to the Grain served as my guide here.

Makes 3 cups

3 pounds ripe apricots (even slightly past-prime is fine), preferably Blenheim, halved and pitted
2/3 cup sugar
1/2 vanilla bean
2 teaspoons Anisette, Pernod, Ouzo, Galliano, or your favorite anise-y liqueur, or more, to taste

Place a small plate in the freezer. Set a large bowl of ice, with a bit of cool water in it, on the counter.

Combine the apricots and sugar in a large, heavy pot. Halve the vanilla bean and scrape in the seeds; toss the pod in, too. Stir over medium heat until the fruit begins to weep its juices and the sugar melts.

Raise the heat slightly and continue cooking for 15 to 20 minutes, stirring constantly, until the apricots have largely fallen apart but some soft mounds of fruit still remain. Kim's book says the jam is done when it reaches 200 degrees on a candy thermometer, but mine never really climbed above 190. To test doneness, spoon a bit on the frozen plate, flip the plate upside down, and see if it clings. If it does, you're good.  Pull the pot from the heat and stir in the liqueur.

Carefully scrape the jam into a bowl that will fit comfortably inside the ice bath; set the bowl in the ice. Stir occasionally for a few minutes, then spoon the jam into clean jars. Let cool, uncovered, then seal and set in the fridge. (I keep all my jam refrigerated because I'm not a proper canner.)

Finally, I like to keep the vanilla bean in the jam. It makes me happy.

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Sriracha

I can't say I find getting older all that gratifying.  Yes, it's nice not to worry about acne, or spelling tests, or hiding behind my locker when changing for PE, but let's be honest: I was, and continue to be, an excellent speller.

Wait, I got off track -- one of the other things about getting older.  That, and morning breath.  I firmly maintain that my breath smelled like fresh mountain air, and tender sprigs of spearmint, until I hit age 30.

One thing has changed for the better, though: my increased tolerance for spicy foods.  I don't know if my taste buds peaked in my twenties or I accidentally lost a couple thousand during childbirth, but I now keep a bottle of Sriracha in the house and actually enjoy the sensation of burning off large parts of my tongue.  It's a good pain.

I remember a few years ago, when I was writing an article for my college alumni magazine.  I visited campus and toured the dining center, and when I got to the condiment table my mouth hit the floor.  When I was a student, back when Stevie Nicks didn't have to share a Grammy stage with long-limbed upstarts, we had things like, I don't know, salt and pepper.  Maybe ketchup and mustard, probably mayo.  But that was it.  We didn't have Sriracha back then.  There was no little fridge with red curry base.  Three kinds of Green Mountain Coffee.  Chai Latte Mix.  A George Foreman grill for making your own paninis.  Who the hell do these kids think they are? 

But now I have Sriracha in my own kitchen arsenal, and though I use only the barest, wimpiest squeeze, I still feel a rush of power as the roof of my mouth becomes a screaming inferno and my tongue begs for mercy.  I may be old enough to be someone's mother, but I can now, finally, take the heat.

Bring it on, all you youthful collegians!  You've got absolutely nothing on me.

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Recipe for Green Tea Soba Noodle Soup with tilapia, portobellos, and sriracha

This demure and healthful soup gets a devilish kick in the ass from a tiny dollop of Sriracha, a thick chili sauce that stokes a fire in your mouth in the most invigorating way.  A sprinkling of Chinese five spice powder adds complexity, and mushrooms add that elusive 5th taste, umami.  Don't you just love that word?  Umami, umami, umami.

Serves 4

One 7-ounce package green tea soba noodles (I used Hakubaku), or plain soba noodles, or, fine, spaghetti
6 cups chicken stock, or, fine, low-sodium chicken broth
Three 1/4" slices fresh ginger
1/2 teaspoon Chinese five spice powder
12 ounces tilapia (about 3 or 4 fillets), any visible bones removed
1 large portobello mushroom (furry gills scraped out and discarded), sliced
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
1/8 teaspoon black pepper
Fresh cilantro leaves and Sriracha sauce, for serving

Bring a large pot of water to a boil and cook the noodles according to package directions.  Drain.

Meanwhile, heat the chicken stock, ginger slices, and 5 spice powder to a hard simmer.  Add the mushrooms.  Gently lower the fish into the broth, add the salt and pepper, and turn the heat down as low as you can. Cover the saucepan, and poach the fillets for 8 minutes, or until opaque and cooked through.

Divide the noodles among 4 bowls.  When the fish is ready, use a slotted spoon to carefully lay a generous piece atop each tangle of noodles.  Ladle with the broth and mushrooms (discard the ginger).  Garnish with a leaf or two of cilantro, and pass the Sriracha alongside.

Serve immediately.

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Tides

Are you an artist, or an athlete?  A bookworm, or a thespian? A musician?  A scientist?

As toddlers, we're encouraged to explore.  To use all of our senses, to make a mess, to try on each and every hat in the dress-up bin.  Eventually, though, as we grow up, the paths before us begin to diverge, and it's harder to hopscotch across identities, to leapfrog from artist to scholar to athlete in a single bound.  We're forced, by our culture, perhaps, or by community norms, to choose a path, and to walk it mindfully, or at least with some sense of purpose.

And that's okay.  It's fine, really.  Some people have a natural facility, a gift, that can only be fully realized with a tremendous amount of hard work.  Take Serena Williams.  Or Yo Yo Ma.  These folks fascinate us, not only because they're so good at what they do, but because they're easy to label, to pigeonhole.  "She's an Athlete."  "He's a Musician."  It's nice and tidy. 

But you know what?  As we get even older, the tide turns again.  The engineer takes up origami.  The pianist starts running.  The shackles of expectation loosen, and the burdens of identity lift.  And you, and I, can explore a pastime not for any promise of future glory or the thrill of peer recognition, but simply because it makes us happy.

A girl who was never artistic, who could never draw or sculpt or paint, might find she's got a thing for color.  Or pictures. 

Or food.

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Manchego Walnut Pesto

In all my years of pesto-making, it never occurred to me to use any cheese but Parmesan.  I'd futzed with the nuts, the herbs, and the oils, but last week for the first time ever I switched up the cheese.  Manchego produces a creamy pesto, one that, when thinned with a bit of cooking water, slides easily over your favorite pasta.

Makes 1-1/2 cups

4 cups loosely-packed basil leaves
1 cup walnuts
4 medium garlic cloves, roughly chopped
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/8 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 cup shredded Manchego cheese

Place the basil, nuts, garlic, salt and pepper in the bowl of a food processor.  Pulse 5 times.  Turn the machine on and slowly stream in the olive oil through the feed tube.  Turn the machine off, scrape down the sides. Process about 5 seconds longer, or until emulsified.  Transfer to a medium bowl and stir in the cheese.  Tweak seasoning to taste.

Use right away, thinned with a little pasta cooking water. 

(Pack leftovers into small containers, cover with a film of olive oil, and refrigerate or freeze for future use.)

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Pesto

Summertime is pesto time.  With an overabundance of basil in my Earth Box, the boys and I head outside on hot afternoons to pluck shiny green leaves from their stems. We grind them up, adding nuts, cheese, garlic, and oil and slather the sauce on everything from linguini to sandwiches to turkey burgers.  One of my favorite recipes is for a toasted pistachio pesto we make over and over and over again.  I put it on pizza and tell Colin's pepperoni to take a hike.

But it's not summer yet, and I can't get myself to buy fresh basil in early spring.  Maybe it's because I'm so aware of the volume we'll have once the plants mature, but I'd feel somehow disloyal, like I was cheating on my future yield. Like my homegrown basil would know I'd bought someone else's and go on Oprah to denounce my unfaithfulness. 

So I seek out other herbs -- ones I don't grow well -- throughout the year. I buy sage in the fall, for nothing pairs better with squash or Thanksgiving fare than those soft, velvety leaves.  Rosemary suits hearty winter meats with its assertive piny-ness, though I must admit I use it sparingly lest it shove more delicate flavors aside.  (Rosemary, to me, is a mustachioed biker in a tea salon; it's hard to pay attention to anything else in the room.)

But cilantro.  Cilantro is my year-round paramour, and I know I'm not alone.  (Check out Charmian's Avocado Oil and Cilantro dip here.)  Sure, cilantro tastes like soap to some of you, but to the rest of us it flatters and sparkles, lifting everything it touches just a little bit higher. 

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Recipe for Cilantro Lime Pesto

I recently received a beautiful book called The New American Olive Oil by Fran Gage (Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 2009).  With 75 recipes from apps to desserts, it celebrates this healthy fat in all its glory.  I'm determined to make one of the olive oil based cakes soon, so stay tuned. 

The first recipe I tried was the cilantro pesto, a preparation so simple it doesn't even use nuts.  I replaced the recipe's Persian lime olive oil with extra virgin olive oil and fresh lime zest and juice.  Drizzle the sauce over shrimp, chicken, burritos or tacos, or combine it with yogurt as a dip for Indian samosas.  

Here's my adaptation.

Makes about 1/2 cup

1 bunch cilantro, about 6" off the ends discarded (leaving you with 1 very firmly packed cup)

1/4 teaspoon fresh lime zest

1-1/2 teaspoons fresh lime juice

1/8 teaspoon salt

5 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

Freshly ground pepper, to taste

Put half the cilantro leaves in a food processor with the lime zest, juice, and salt.  Turn the machine on, and slowly stream in half the olive oil.  Stop the motor and scrape down the sides of the bowl.  Turn the machine back on and stream in the remaining oil.  Transfer to a small bowl and add additional salt, if desired, and pepper, to taste.  Use immediately, or cover with plastic and store in the fridge.

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