Il Fornaio

2009-05-01T07:58:00.000-07:00

Taco Tuesday!

Sarah of the always impeccable and inspiring Pink of Perfection recently asked her readers about how they ritualize the everyday-- what is the first thing you feel like cooking in the spring, for example (asparagus) or for that first snowstorm (white bean soup and Wonderfalls on DVD), and when she asked us to leave a comment on how we ritualize the every day, I immediately shared Taco Tuesday. She kindly responded that she loved that idea and a few weeks later, I open up her site to see an entire post dedicated to Taco Tuesday. It was lovely of her.

So I thought I should reveal a little more on Taco Tuesday here and share some recent Taco Tuesday greatest hits.

We went to Maui for our honeymoon in 2008 and stayed for 10 days in a condo in Kihei, which was perfect for us. We don't always want to go out for dinner when we're travelling, sometimes we want the option to eat olives and hummus and chips on our lanai, listening to the ocean and looking at the mountains. We arrived terribly late on Monday (3 am was what our poor bodies thought it was) and spent most of Tuesday groggy (it was also the only day of our trip it rained, which was quite kind of Maui because it was also the only day we couldn't imagine being active). But come 5 pm, we wandered over to Fred's Mexican Restaurant down the street and settled in on their deck, by the beach, and partook in giant 20 ounce margaritas, chips and salsa, and a la carte tacos (mahi mahi, mmhmm).

Lee took a few pictures of me that night and they are funny to compare to the end of that trip-- I'm all dark circles and pale skin, and you can see the remnants of the stress zit on my chin that I grew the day before the wedding. It was though, the perfect first night in Maui.

One week later, Tuesday was going to be our last night in Maui. We had an overnight flight the next day, and had to be at the airport by 2 pm to catch our connection to Honolulu. So once again, we went to Taco Tuesday, and it was the perfect book end to our trip. We were there a little later that day, so we were able to catch the sunset. We made friends with our waiter, who used to live in New York (until he met a girl when they were both working at the Hooters in midtown and they moved back to Maui). I was suddenly a little tan, my skin was clear, and I was more relaxed than I had been in about a year.

So when we got home from Maui, we instituted Taco Tuesday at home. It isn't always tacos, but I think I can saw with certainty, it is always something with beans and always has a Mexican flare. And for that matter, it isn't always Tuesday (though we still call it Taco Tuesday, even if it falls on a Wednesday). Sarah was right in her post-- there is something so simple, and so fresh, about Mexican food, and the flavors are so lively that it is something you can definitely look forward to and can make a mundane Tuesday something a little more festive.

One of our standbys are these incredibly unattractive black bean quesadillas-- we cook the black beans down and let them thicken up with spices, then layer them on corn tortillas with pepperjack cheese. I learned this method of cooking quesadillas from an episode of America's Test Kitchen-- spray each side with olive oil and then add a few shakes of sea salt. The crispy, salty shell is then absolutely perfect.

This one was a bit of an oddball but it still fit the bill. This past Tuesday was 90 degrees here in New York and I couldn't handle spending much quality time with a steaming hot cast iron skillet. So instead I cooked up some quinoa, chilled it down using cold water, and then added a diced mango, rinsed black beans, and feta, all doused in a lime honey dressing. Ole was that good.

Black Bean Quesadillas

1 15 oz. can of black beans

1 tsp cumin

1/4 tsp oregano

hot sauce to taste

salt to taste

8 corn tortillas

pepperjack cheese, or your preferred melting cheese

Drain off most of the liquid in your can of black beans. Add to a small saucepan over medium heat. Splash in hot sauce to taste, cumin, oregano, and salt. Cook until warm, and then mash some of the beans to thicken (I usually just use the back of my wooden spoon and do it directly in the pot). Remove from heat. They will continue to thicken as they cool.

Spread out four corn tortillas and sprinkle with however much pepperjack cheese you would like (I have a heavy hand). Spoon a few tablespoons of beans on the cheese. Take another tortilla and top. Repeat with the remaining three quesadillas.

Heat a non stick or cast iron skillet on medium heat. Spray the tops with olive oil and sprinkle with sea salt or kosher salt. Place in the skillet salt side down (I usually only make one at a time to let it get extra brown and crispy). Olive oil and salt the side that is facing up so it will be ready to be flipped.

Flip when the first side is brown and toasty and cook the other side until that one too is how you like it.

Serve with salsa and a squeeze of lime.

Quinoa Mango Black Bean Salad

1 c. uncooked quinoa (we used red because we had it, but any color)

1 medium ripe mango

1 15 oz. can black beans

4 ounces feta

juice of 1 lime

1/2 tsp honey

1/4 c. olive oil

salt and pepper to taste

Rinse the quinoa well in a fine mesh strainer to get rid of the bitter coating. Bring 2 c. of water to a boil and add quinoa. Cook until tender and the little quinoa tails come out (you'll know it when it happens), about 10 to 12 minutes.

While the quinoa is cooking, mix together your dressing. In a small container, add the juice of the lime, olive oil, honey, and salt and pepper. Put a lid on the container and shake. Taste, and adjust seasonings as needed (we needed a smidge more honey, for example).

Peel your mango and cut pieces off of the core. I make small, 1/2 inch thick slices from the outside in until I hit the pit and that seems to work best for me. Cut in to bite size pieces.

Drain and rinse black beans. Set aside.

When the quinoa is done, drain off any excess water and put the quinoa in a large bowl. Add beans and mango and toss to combine. Add the lime dressing and stir until coated. Add feta and stir gently. Serve, with a squeeze of lime.

2009-04-24T06:05:00.000-07:00

Maple Glazed Walnuts

Did anyone else lose their cooking mojo this month?

I did. I apologize.

I think it had to do with the lingering winter. When it snowed in early April, okay, I survived. But April never really threw us a nice day until this last week. Winter was hard this year, for everyone. The news told us it was the worst winter in decades, financially, economically, etc. And it put us all in a funk. So just as we looked to the New Year as a reprieve, the inauguration as a sign of hope (seriously, don't you just love our president?!), we were waiting for spring to bring us some sign of hope.

But, spring, you took your time. And now you are kicking ass. 86 tomorrow? I am ready to debut my bare, albeit super pale, legs.

So the last month was sparse when it came to food. We stuck to old favorites, chana punjabi, pastas with vodka sauce, tofu doused in hot sauce, pizza, take out chinese. I got adventurous on Wednesday and decided to make an ancho chili soup I had seen in the Village Voice and was so disappointed that Thursday's dinner was compiled entirely from the Whole Foods salad bar (okay, I did actually plan to cook something, but when I saw that giant vat of pepperjack mac and cheese, the game was over). But over the last month, these walnuts really got us through.

Walnuts have never been the most thrilling nut-- I always find them slightly chalky, and almost watery, and I can tolerate them in cookies and granola but I'm not eating them by the handful. But these walnuts disappear as quickly as I make them. The sweet coating, the crunch from the dry roasting, the flaky salt makes them a far more glamourous cousin to the raw walnut.

Maple Glazed Walnuts

2 cups raw walnuts

1/3 cup maple syrup

Kosher or other flake salt

In a dry skillet, pour in your walnuts. Add the maple syrup and turn on medium heat. Cook, shaking and stirring every so often, until the syrup is coating the walnuts (and you don't see any sitting in the pan) and the walnuts have darkened in color. Add salt (I prefer Kosher) to taste. Try not to eat all two cups before they have even left the pan.

Let cool before sealing in container. I'm not really sure how long these keep since there have never been any left beyond three days in my house.

Eat plain by the handful, with yogurt, with fruit, on top of a salad...

2009-04-03T15:10:00.000-07:00

Baguettes

I've been on a bread kick.

I think it is the impending warm weather. I am desperate for spring. I can taste it in the air, but we are still struggling with frigid mornings and wool coats when all I want in the world is ballet flats and light sweaters. It is coming though; I know spring is coming and I'm ready.

But with spring comes 70, 80 degrees days right after it. And during that time, my kitchen is a freaking sauna. No matter what we do, we roast in there. On particularly hot days, we eat frozen grapes or chinese take out on our bed, which is directly in front of the air conditioning unit there. During the summer, bread baking is the last thing I want to do.

So at some point this week, I stumbled on a discussion of baking baguettes on Serious Eats. Someone linked to the King Arthur recipe for French style baguettes and I immediately bookmarked it, and immediately began racing the clock to make it. I didn't have to wait long. My working from home days are perfect for bread baking. Minimal time away from the computer required, and plenty of time for those long periods of rest.

So I began the starter last night, and found myself running the KitchenAid at 8 am this morning to bring together the dough. After a three hour rest, I began shaping the loaves and they were in the oven an hour later.

Now, I have been to Paris and I have had a good baguette, but I will admit it has been a while. So can I say these are perfect, Parisian specimens? No. But the crust crackled while I pried it off the baking sheet and as I smeared butter on a piece and ate it, still warm (and still burning my fingers a little), I was in love. This is a great recipe, so easy, but the taste is outstanding. The crust resists and then shatters as you bite down on it. It was one of those little cooking miracles-- I can make this in my tiny apartment kitchen? Isn't that kind of amazing?

And you can too!

Baguettes

Recipe here, along with step by step photos.

Starter
1/2 cup cool water
1/16 teaspoon active dry yeast or instant yeast
1 cup Unbleached Bread Flour

Dough
1 teaspoon active dry yeast or instant yeast
1 cup to 1 1/4 cups lukewarm water*
all of the starter
3 1/2 cups Unbleached Bread Flour
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
*Use the lesser amount in summer (or in a humid environment), the greater amount in winter (or in a dry climate), and somewhere in between the rest of the year, or if your house is climate controlled.

1) Make the starter by mixing the yeast with the water (no need to do this if you're using instant yeast), then mixing in the flour to make a soft dough. Cover and let rest at room temperature for about 14 hours; overnight works well. The starter should have risen and become bubbly. If it hasn't, your yeast may not be working. Dissolve 1/4 teaspoon of yeast in 1 tablespoon lukewarm water with a pinch of sugar, and wait 15 minutes. If nothing happens, replace your yeast, and begin the starter process again.

2) If you're using active dry yeast, mix it with the water, then combine with the starter, flour, and salt. If you're using instant yeast, there's no need to combine it with the water first. Mix and knead everything together—by hand, mixer or bread machine set on the dough cycle—till you've made a soft, somewhat smooth dough; it should be cohesive, but the surface may still be a bit rough. Knead for about 5 minutes on speed 2 of a stand mixer

3) Place the dough in a lightly greased medium-size bowl, cover the bowl, and let the dough rise for 3 hours, gently deflating it and turning it over after 1 hour, and then again after 2 hours.

4) Turn the dough out onto a lightly greased work surface. Divide it into three equal pieces.

5) Shape each piece into a rough, slightly flattened oval, cover with greased plastic wrap, and let them rest for 15 minutes.

6) Working with one piece of dough at a time, fold the dough in half lengthwise, and seal the edges with the heel of your hand. Flatten it slightly, and fold and seal again.

7) With the seam-side down, cup your fingers and gently roll the dough into a 15" log. Place the logs seam-side down onto a lightly greased or parchment-lined sheet pan or pans.*

8) Cover them with a cover or lightly greased plastic wrap, and allow the loaves to rise till they've become very puffy, about 1 1/2 hours.9) Towards the end of the rising time, preheat your oven to 450°F; if you're using a baking stone, place it on the lowest rack.

10) Using a very sharp knife held at about a 45° angle, make three 8" vertical slashes in each baguette. Spritz the baguettes heavily with warm water; this will help them develop a crackly-crisp crust.

11) Bake the baguettes until they're a very deep golden brown, 25 to 30 minutes. Remove them from the oven and cool on a rack. Or, for the very crispiest baguettes, turn off the oven, crack it open about 2", and allow the baguettes to cool in the oven.Yield: Three 16" baguettes.

2009-03-20T11:53:00.000-07:00

Black Eyed Peas in Goan Curry

I actually made this about a month ago and love love loved it. And then, as you guessed it, instantly forgot about it. But now that I have revisited the picture I have no idea how that happened. This was delightful. The coconut milk based curry, the creamy black eyed peas, the sharp tangy cabbage salad.

I have to say though, mostly I saw this picture and remembered how long that head of cabbage lasted. We used it as a topping for many a fish taco and many a sharp side salad before we finally finished it, and I finally understood how cabbage is always a popular pick for economical produce shopping.

I digress, but I had frozen a quart of black eyed peas from New Year's Day, when I had made the hoppin' john, and I plucked them out one week, determined to use them. I had had this recipe bookmarked from Smitten Kitchen forever, and I was thrilled to finally be able to try it. the peas were fantastic-- the sharpness of lemon cut the richness of the coconut milk and it was a perfect curry. I'm looking forward to making it again, and also maybe modifying the base curry to other vegetables, beans, lentils etc. I think this is a very versatile base--

Black-Eyed Peas in a Spicy Goan Curry

Adapted from Ruta Kahate via SFGate.com, 6/8/07

Adapted from there from Smitten Kitchen

Serves 4 to 6
1 cup dried black-eyed peas or two 15-ounce cans, drained
2 tablespoons, canola oil
1 small yellow onion, minced (about 1 cup)
1 teaspoon coriander seeds, finely ground
1/2 teaspoon finely grated garlic (about 1 large clove)
1/2 teaspoon finely grated ginger (about a 1-inch piece)
1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric
1/2 teaspoon cayenne
1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds, finely ground
1/4 cup minced tomato (1 small tomato)
2 cups (or 1 cup if using canned peas) hot water
1/2 teaspoon salt, or to taste if using canned peas
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1 cup canned coconut milk
2 tablespoons minced cilantro leaves
1 tablespoon lemon juice

If using dried black-eyed peas, rinse and soak them in enough water to cover for 6 to 8 hours. Drain.

In a large saucepan, heat the oil over medium-low heat and saute the onion until it turns dark brown, about 8 minutes. Add the coriander, garlic, ginger, turmeric, cayenne and cumin, and stir for 2 minutes. Add the tomato and stir over low heat until it disintegrates.

Add the peas and mix well. Pour in the hot water, if using, add the salt and sugar, and bring to a boil. Turn the heat down to low, cover, and simmer until the peas are cooked through, about 20 minutes. If using canned peas, simmer for only 10 minutes (it is essential to simmer the canned peas, too, so that all the flavors blend better). Stir in the coconut milk and simmer uncovered for another 8 to 10 minutes, again allowing the flavors to come together.

Add the cilantro and lemon juice, simmer for 1 minute more, and remove from heat. Serve hot.

2009-03-17T12:31:00.000-07:00

Mustard Potatoes

I think everyone has that item in their pantry or fridge that just seems to grow exponentially and you’re not sure how. For us, it is vinegars and mustard. The mustard situation is pretty much out of control. We have spicy brown, Dijon, whole grain, Dijon from Trader Joe’s when we heard it was the best one, and tons of mini bottles of Dijon that we seem to come home with every time Lee’s parents stay at a hotel near us. So basically, we’re stupid with mustard.

And I have never met a better partner for whole grain mustard then these salty, tangy, lemony potatoes.

I have waxed ecstatic about the poached egg before, but the poached egg over mustard potatoes is a whole new category. Mustard potatoes on the side of fish, beef. Mustard potatoes will be an impressive side dish for your holiday dinner. Mustard potatoes can be eaten cold from the fridge, dipped in more mustard if you are so inclined. Mustard potatoes think you are pretty and wrote your name in the sand. Mustard potatoes cleaned your kitchen for you.

You catch my drift, yes? Make these. Oh, and make the full amount because you will want the leftovers on the side of your lunchtime grilled cheese, and for every other occasion you can think of.

Mustard-Roasted Potatoes
From SmittenKitchen.com

Adapted from Gourmet, December 2007
Makes 10 servings

Nonstick vegetable oil spray

1/2 cup whole grain Dijon mustard

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

2 tablespoons (1/4 stick or 1/2 ounce) butter, melted

2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

3 garlic cloves, minced

1 tablespoon dried oregano

1 teaspoon finely grated lemon peel

1 teaspoon coarse kosher salt

3 pounds 1- to 1 1/2-inch-diameter mixed unpeeled red-skinned and white-skinned potatoes, cut into 3/4-inch-wide wedges

Position 1 rack in top third of oven and 1 rack in bottom third of oven and preheat to 425°F. Spray 2 large rimmed baking sheets with nonstick spray.

Whisk mustard, olive oil, butter, lemon juice, garlic, oregano, lemon peel, and salt in large bowl to blend. Add potatoes; sprinkle generously with freshly ground black pepper and toss to coat.

Divide potatoes between prepared baking sheets, leaving any excess mustard mixture behind in bowl. Spread potatoes in single layer. Roast potatoes 20 minutes. Reverse baking sheets and roast until potatoes are crusty outside and tender inside, turning occasionally, about 25 minutes longer. Transfer potatoes to serving bowl

2009-03-06T15:17:00.000-08:00

Wheat Thins

In part two of sweep the freezer while there is a blizzard outside, aka, what can I do with half a cup of wheat bran?, I came across these crackers in Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone. I've made crackers before, but I tend to get lazy and not roll them out thin enough, so they come out sort of dense and they seem stale very quickly. These avoided that fate pretty well.

These aren't the wheat thins you think of when you pick up the Nabisco box at the grocery store. These are similarly nutty and sweet, with salt flecks on top and are perfect with my three favorite cracker toppings: cheddar cheese, hummus, and peanut butter spooned out of the jar and smeared on crackers while standing up because you can't wait until dinner but you want to. The cutting in of the butter is a little fussy for crackers, more in line with a homemade pie crust, but if you have a food processor, I would recommend, processing all of the dry ingredients, whizzing it again to cut in the butter, and then pulsing it while adding water until a dough is formed.

Wheat Thins

Adapted from Deborah Madison

1 1/2 c. flour

1/2 c. wheat bran

1/2 tsp salt

1 stick (1/2 c.) butter

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Combine flour, bran, and salt. Cut the cold butter in to smaller pieces and add to the flour mixture, cutting in the butter with a pastry cutter, two butter knives, or your hands (or see above for food processor instructions) until it looks like coarse crumbs. Stir in 5 tablespoons of ice water until the dough clings together when combined (use your hands-- it will feel like a pie dough, a little tacky but not wet). Flour a surface, and your rolling pin, and roll out as thin as you can manage. Transfer to a cookie sheet. Prick the crackers all over with a fork, and sprinkle the surface of the crackers with salt. Cut the crackers with a pizza cutter in to any shape desired.

Bake until lightly browned, 8 to 10 minutes (though it took longer in my oven). Let cool briefly and serve. Store in an airtight container or freeze.

2009-03-03T08:25:00.000-08:00

Cranberry Shortcake

I love having a super stocked freezer, and I love daydreaming about having a box freezer one day, where I don’t need to worry about quarts of frozen soup and bags of blueberries from last June falling on to my feet. But because I live in an apartment and have the top half freezer, and I insist on keeping my ice cream maker in there in case of ice cream emergency, well, space is at a premium. On occasion, we have to do a sweep of the freezer and start eating. Like when a package arrives from my mother-in-law with fifteen boxes of girl scout cookies and some of those will have to fit in the freezer.

With yesterday’s snow day from work (I, no lie, hopped up and down when I heard the prerecorded message on my office’s weather hotline), I did some freezer sweeping and decided I would use up the 6 ounces of frozen cranberries I had in residence, along with the half a cup of bran flakes (though, not in the same recipe). I’m not a huge fan of layer cakes, I think the frosting does me in, but I am a huge fan of coffee cakes. The thick crumble on the top, the hidden layers of fruit, the moistness of the cake… so I decided to make a cranberry vanilla coffee cake I had spied on Smitten Kitchen, courtesy of Gourmet.

It was a terribly easy recipe that went incredibly wrong for me, and then did a full 360 and came out so right…

I made the vanilla sugar by processing sugar and the scrapings from half a vanilla bean, and set it aside to dish out throughout the recipe. I processed cranberries (defrosted) and vanilla sugar. I creamed butter and vanilla sugar. I went to the fridge to get eggs and returned with milk (please note: foreshadowing) and added milk and the flour mixture in alternating batches. I layered the cake batter and cranberry mixture in a 9 inch cake pan, and then read the instructions for the crumble topping: Combine the remaining ¼ c. of vanilla sugar with 1 tablespoon of butter… huh? I have way more than a quarter cup left… uh oh.

I only added half a cup of sugar to the butter instead of a full cup.

But that’s okay, I decided. I would add a little extra sugar to the crumbly topping and it will come out fine. So in the oven it went.

About halfway through the baking time, I had a sudden thought. Why weren’t there any eggs in that recipe? Then I remembered—there were two eggs. I had just completely forgotten to add them. I had gone to the fridge for them, but instead returned with the milk.

The cake came out of the oven and it looked delicious, but I figured it was bound for the trash as soon as it cooled. But at the last minute, I cut a little sliver, and know what? It was delicious. It was not a coffee cake—the texture was that of shortcake biscuits, kind of like a scone. But it worked against the vanilla sweetness of the topping and the tart sweet cranberry filling.

I would like to make this again the way the recipe intended, but my husband has already asked me to always forget the eggs and extra sugar. So, this isn’t a coffee cake recipe I’m providing, but a cranberry shortcake recipe. If you would like to make the coffee cake version, follow this recipe instead.

Cranberry Vanilla Shortcake

Adapted from Gourmet, December 2008

1/2 vanilla bean, split lengthwise

1 1/2 cups sugar

2 cups fresh or thawed frozen cranberries (6 ounces)

2 cups plus 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour, divided

2 teaspoons baking powder

3/4 teaspoon salt

1 stick plus 2 tablespoon unsalted butter, softened, divided

1/2 cup whole milk

Confectioners sugar, for dusting

Preheat oven to 375°F with rack in middle. Generously butter a 9- by 2-inch round cake pan.

Scrape seeds from vanilla bean into a food processor with tip of a paring knife. Add sugar and pulse to combine. Transfer to a bowl.

Pulse cranberries with 1/2 cup vanilla sugar in processor until finely chopped.

Whisk together 2 cups flour, baking powder, and salt. Beat together 1 stick butter and 1/2 cup vanilla sugar in a bowl with an electric mixer at medium-high speed until pale and fluffy. Reduce speed to low and mix in flour mixture and milk alternately in batches, beginning and ending with flour, until just combined.

Spread half of batter in pan, then spoon cranberries over it, leaving a 1/2-inch border around edge. Spoon small bits of the remaining batter over the top of the cranberries and smooth them with as gentle of a hand as possible.

Blend remaining vanilla sugar with 2 tablespoon of butter and 1 Tbs flour using your fingertips. Crumble over top of cake.

Bake until a wooden pick inserted into cake (not into cranberry filling) comes out clean and side begins to pull away from pan (begin checking after 30 minutes). Cool in pan 30 minutes, then remove from pan and cool completely, crumb side up.

This stayed fresh for about three days at room temperature, tightly wrapped. I can't vouch for anything beyond that because we ate it all in three days.

2009-02-25T11:51:00.001-08:00

Hot Chocolate Cookies

Hi guys.

Just a couple of quick hits since I’ve been a little MIA. No particular reason, I think I’m just in the end of winter, cannot face another sweet potato, lets just eat grilled cheese again funk. Don’t get me wrong—I love grilled cheese. Especially since I discovered the new Arnold’s Everything Rye bread… I’m salivating thinking about it. But grilled cheese isn’t exactly worthy of a write up.

Other things that are:

Orangette’s new book, A Homemade Life. I received my copy yesterday, thanks to an Amazon pre-order, and it is everything you expected from Molly. It is just lovely, the stories, the recipes. A story about her father brought me to tears. The story of how she and her husband met, even though I already knew courtesy of the blog, made me swoon on the subway this morning. And that is not even to speak about the recipes… please, don’t miss this one.

I found these two James Beard cookbooks at a used book sale for a dollar each. I love the covers, and the recipes look amazing as well. I do love the brutal honesty in some of the descriptions. In the bread one, one recipe is noted that he finds it incredibly too salty, but some people like that so he’s including it anyway. Well, okay. Let me run right out and make that one (though, I do like things salty so maybe I’m one of those people he’s referring to).

I recently made these cookies courtesy of Orangette, chewy cocoa chocolate chip cookies, baked in to miniature, with hits of chocolate chips in the mix. The yogurt makes them exceptionally chewy, and it is the type of cookie you can make at the last minute with things kicking around your house. The fact it only called for four tablespoons of butter, which was exactly how much I had left, made it an instant favorite. They taste like hot cocoa in a cookie.

Hot Chocolate Cookies

1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
¼ tsp. baking soda
1/8 tsp. salt
4 Tbsp. (½ stick) unsalted butter
2/3 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup light brown sugar
7 Tbsp. unsweetened cocoa powder
1/3 cup plain yogurt, preferably not low- or nonfat
1 tsp. vanilla extract
½ cup chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 350°F.

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone liner.

In a small bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, and salt. In the microwave, or over the stove, melt the butter and pour in to a separate bowl. Add the sugars, and sift in the cocoa. Stir to blend well.

Add the yogurt and vanilla and stir to mix thoroughly. Add the dry flour mixture, and stir to just combine. Add the chocolate chips and stir to incorporate.

Drop the dough by generous tablespoons onto the prepared baking sheet. I tend to make small cookies, about a tablespoons worth of dough. Bake for 9 to 11 minutes, or until the tops of the cookies are crackly and look set. Cool the cookies in a pan for ten minutes and then transfer to a wire rack.

Notes, or confessions: I don't usually sift my cocoa. I don't know if I got a particularly non clumpy batch last time, but I've never bothered.

Once, I didn't have any plain yogurt but wanted these cookies desperately. So I used vanilla yogurt, and then halved the amount of extract. I think they were just as delicious.

2009-02-10T15:10:00.000-08:00

Braised White Beans

So, has the time come to just call this blog the bean? Or Italian for the Bean?

Anyway. This recipe came from some of the influx of magazines that always seem to reside in my apartment. I subscribe to Gourmet, Bon Appetit, Real Simple, Southern Living (gifted to me) and Domino (well, I did. *sniff*). My husband receives New York and Wired. So about once a month, our magazine rack reaches critical mass and we have to start weeding things out.

When this happens, I usually page through the food magazines and tear out anything I think I may want to make. Unfortunately, these stacks go in a file folder and a lot of times, things go missing and forgotten. Or sometimes, I make the item but usually because it was on another blog and that was what looked good to me.

These braised white beans were an exception to the rule-- I made them within 4 days of tearing out the recipe. White beans are cooked, and then braised with olive oil, water, and garlic, and then the whole thing is topped off with fresh marjoram. I modified this slightly to accomodate different herbs, and I probably cooked it more than the cookbook authors would have recommended (I liked it thicker) but it was an absolute winner. The garlicky beans, topped off with a mix of herbs, and spooned on toasted Italian bread was amazing. We ate it for dinner with a side of roasted asparagus and it was the perfect light dinner. I also imagine wilting some spinach in the beans would be tasty, or even just eating them in a bowl with a grating of parmesan on top, maybe even browned under the broiler... okay, seriously, I just wrote down "dried cannelini beans" on my shopping list so I can make this again next week.

Braised White Beans

Adapted from A16: Food and Wine; recipe originally published as part of Gourmet's Cookbook Club.

2 c. dried cannellini beans (1 lb bag, dried beans)

2 tsp kosher salt

3/4 c. extra virgin olive oil

2 cloves garlic, smashed with side of knife

1 bay leaf

1/4 tsp dried oregano

1/2 tbs dried herbs de provence

Rinse the beans in a colander and transfer to a bowl. Cover with cold water by at least 2 inches and let soak for at least two hours and up to overnight.

Drain the beans and transfer them to a large pot (I used a 4.5 qt dutch oven). Add water to cover by 1 to 2 inches. Bring to a boil and then reduce to a simmer and cook until tender, anywhere between one to two hours (mine took about an hour fifteen). If any foam rises, skim it off.

When the beans are tender, turn off heat and add salt. Let the beans sit in their cooking water for 30 minutes. Reserve 3/4 cup of the cooking water, and drain the beans.

In a large pot (I reused the same one), heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add the garlic, bay leaf, and oregano and cook for about three minutes until the garlic softens. Stir in the beans and the cooking water. Simmer gently until the beans achieve a creamy consistency. The recipe said this would take about 4 minutes, but it took about ten to get the consistency I wanted. Remove from heat and pluck out the bay leaf.

Stir in the herbs de provence and adjust the seasoning-- I found it needed a good bit more salt. Serve with toast points, in a bowl with fresh breadcrumbs, or parmesan, or in a tupperware container as leftovers the next day that just seem to get better and better.

2009-02-06T10:45:00.000-08:00

Supernatural Brownies

A couple of years ago, we took a recreational class at the Institute of Culinary Education that was all about chocolate-- chocolate cake, brownies, shakes, truffles, hot chocolate, and other things that I know I'm forgetting. The class was a treat, and I highly recommend taking a class at ICE if you have the chance-- you get a booklet of recipes, to meet other people, to sit down to a lovely meal prepared by other ICE students, enjoy a glass of wine, and then to eat your hard work.

In this class, we made these amazing, "supernatural" brownies, and they were immediately declared my favorite brownie. They beat Nigella's with her pound of butter and the pain I get in my heart when I eat them; they nudged out Cook's Illustrated too, with their three different kinds of chocolate. And they were so, so easy!

About a year later, the New York Times did a spread on brownies and featured Nick Malgeri's supernatural brownie recipe, the same one we used in class. It sparked my memory of those perfectly moist, crackly topped brownie and I was all set to make them again.

Except I didn't. Until last night. Please. Don't make the same mistake I did. Make these, and make them regularly. Life is too short not to have these at least on a monthly basis.

Supernatural Brownies
From Nick Malgieri, The Institute of Culinary Education, and the New York Times

2 sticks (16 tablespoons) butter, more for pan and parchment paper
8 ounces bittersweet chocolate
4 eggs
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup dark brown sugar, such as muscovado
1 cup granulated sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup flour
1/2 cup chopped walnuts or 3/4 cup whole walnuts, optional.

1. Butter a 13-by-9-inch baking pan and line with buttered parchment paper (I didn't use parchment and it was fine). Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In top of a double boiler set over \simmering water, or on low \in a microwave, melt butter and chocolate together. Cool slightly. In a large bowl or mixer, whisk eggs. Whisk in salt, sugars and vanilla.

2. Whisk in chocolate mixture. Fold in flour just until combined. If using chopped walnuts, stir them in. Pour batter into prepared pan. If using whole walnuts, arrange on top of batter. Bake for 35 to 40 minutes or until shiny and beginning to crack on top. Cool in pan on rack.

Yield: 15 large or 24 small brownies.

Note: I actually quartered the recipe to accomodate the amount of butter I had. It fit perfectly in an 8 inch cake pan, which is why you see a brownie wedge rather than a brownie square.

2009-01-30T14:02:00.000-08:00

Savory Strata

This was a tough one to get an appetizing picture of. I mean, essentially it is tomato sauce bread pudding. It is a big sloppy casserole. It is delicious, fairly cheap, and almost able to made entirely from your pantry. But-- it doesn't photograph, so let's just get this over with.

You still there? Awesome. Well, what we have here is a savory strata, a bread pudding of sorts, courtesy of Deborah Madison yet again. I bought most of the ingredients last week, but in a fit of laziness, put off making it for days. There were so many steps! I get home so late! And there are episodes of Mad Men to cram in to my day people!

But I made myself do it yesterday, mostly because I hate, hate, hate letting things go to waste, and the mushrooms were starting to look a little sad. At this point though, I had, um, used some of the other ingredients in other things during the week and had to improvise a bit. I scaled back on some things, used frozen spinach instead of fresh, and baked it in an 8x8 dish instead, so I got more height out of it. And I loved my way. This was a cross between a quiche and a bread pudding, with some aggressive flavors coming from the rosemary, garlic, and gorgonzola. We ate it with a few sweet potato wedges on the side, and it yielded a good extra four servings. Lee took his for lunch, but I couldn't wait that long and ate it for breakfast.

I also think there is definitely room for improvisation here. Instead of portobellos, how about some carmelized onions? Spinach could be swapped out for kale, or chard. And I imagine feta on top instead of gorgonzola would also be great, though maybe less than the amount of gorgonzola called for.

Strata

Adapted from Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone by Deborah Madison

12 slices of stale bread, country white, sourdough, or Italian bread
5 cloves of garlic, peeled
½ teaspoon of salt
One 28 ounce can of crushed tomatoes
1 ten ounce box of frozen, chopped spinach, defrosted
10 ounces of baby portabellas, stems removed and tops sliced
1 tsp of dried rosemary
4 ounces of gorgonzola
½ cup of mozzarella, shredded
3 tbs olive oil
2 eggs
1 c. milk

Preheat oven to 375 degrees

In a mortar and pestle, or with a big knife on your cutting board, crush the garlic cloves with half teaspoon of salt.

In a saucepan, add a pinch of the garlic mixture, a tablespoon of olive oil, and the can of tomatoes. Stir, and let simmer for 20 minutes.

While the tomatoes are cooking, sauté the spinach with half of the remaining garlic for a few minutes. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Move the spinach to a bowl, and add two more tablespoons of oil, the remaining garlic, and the sliced mushrooms. Cook until they begin to take on color, about 8-10 minutes.

At this point your tomato sauce should be done. Taste to adjust salt and pepper and remove from heat.

Lightly oil an 8x8 baking dish. Add a little bit of tomato sauce to the bottom (a few tablespoons) and lay out your first layer of bread (I used four slices). Add spinach on top, and then top the spinach with ¼ cup of tomato sauce. Top with half of the mozzarella. Sprinkle with half of the rosemary.

Add another layer of bread, and another quarter cup of tomato sauce. Add the mushrooms on top of that. Add the remaining mozzarella. Top with the remaining amount of rosemary.

Add the last layer of bread. Top with remaining tomato sauce (if it seems like a lot is left, use your discretion and add as much as you would like). Top this with the four ounce of gorgonzola.

In a separate bowl, mix eggs and milk. Stir well. Pour this custard over the layers.

Bake uncovered until the custard is firm, and the gorgonzola is browned. It took about 40 minutes in my oven, but it will vary.

2009-01-28T09:37:00.000-08:00

Nothing new.

We had a few duds this week. Pasta with cauliflower, tossed with grainy mustard, parsley, and butter? It was okay. I ate the leftovers for lunch yesterday willingly, but I wouldn't find myself rushing to make it again.

But the biggest hit of the kitchen this week wasn't made by us. It was however carried by us. Meet the new kitchen table.

Isn't she adorable? We had been in the market for a new table for a while, but we both had such clear ideas of what we wanted. Lee wanted a retro formica number. I wanted a table from Anthropologie that was a grand and never going to happen. But then we walked in to our favorite little vintage store (antique store sounds too much like somewhere Emily Gilmore would have shopped) and found this baby and found our compromise table.

(it is bigger in person. Plus it has two leaves to pull out in case we ever host Thanksgiving dinner in our 600 square foot apartment)

2009-01-23T06:44:00.000-08:00

Red Bean Gumbo with Greens

In case you couldn't tell, I'm kind of obsessed with beans. I wasn't always. I fact, if you had asked me six years ago, I would have told you I didn't like beans. But in 2004 I moved to a neighborhood in Jersey City that had a large Dominican population and most restaurants, even pizza joints and the pancake house, gave you rice and beans on the side. So I came around to the bean via red beans and yellow rice.

Now, there are usually 4 or 5 miscellaneous sacks of beans kicking around my "pantry" (read: shelves shoved in the corner of our tiny kitchen). I like dried and canned. I like Rancho Gordo and Goya. I like black bean quesadillas thrown together with canned black beans, smashed sweet potatoes, and corn tortillas. I like chickpeas in almost any imaginable form. I even like the sad little cans of vegetarian baked beans, though I can't believe am admitting that in public (it's a rarity. Mostly at barbeques).

So when I was flipping through Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone one day, I spied her recipe for red bean gumbo and immediately added the ingredients to my shopping list. Her gumbo starts off the way most gumbos do-- creating a rusty, deep red roux to give gumbo its signature color. Then in went the modified mirepoix, or the holy trinity-- celery, onion, and red pepper. We let that cook for a while, then added spices, beans, and the cooking water from the kale, that will be added afterwards and let the whole thing come together.

The gumbo is rich, with so much flavor that even sausage lovers and gumbo purists would love this. Rather than serving it over rice, we added about two cups of cooked brown rice to the gumbo itself, creating a thick stew. The yield on this recipe is incredible-- we have some in the freezer, and we both ate it for lunch for four days straight.

Red Bean Gumbo with Greens

2-3 large bunches of assorted greens (mustard, turnip, collards, kale, etc.)

1/3 cup oil

6 Tablespoons flour

1/2 cup chopped parsley

1 1/2 teaspoons dried thyme

1 1/2 teaspoons dried oregano

1 Tablespoon paprika

3/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes

3/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

2 large onions, chopped

2 bell peppers, cut into 1/2" pieces

3 stalks of celery, chopped

5 garlic cloves, minced

3 cups cooked red kidney beans or two 15 ounce cans, rinsed

2 quarts stock or reserved greens cooking water or reserved bean cooking water

Trim the tough stems off of your greens and boil them in a large pot of salted water until tender (it took about 12 minutes with kale, which is what we used). Scoop them out, reserving the cooking water. Roughly chop the greens and set aside.

Note: Kale doesn't cook down like chard or spinach does. So don't assume you can continue to cram more in the pot as it cooks. Make sure you use a large enough pot from the start.

In a large pot (and I do mean large), make the roux. Heat the oil over medium heat and whisk in the flour. Reduce the heat to low and cook, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon, until it is a rusty dark reddish brown, about 15 minutes. Stir in the spices, then add the celery, red pepper, and onion. Cook that all together for about five minutes, then add the garlic, about three teaspoons of salt, and the two quarts of liquid (water, green cooking water, bean cooking water if you cooked your own beans).

Bring to a boil and then reduce to a simmer and cook for about 20 minutes. Add the beans and the greens and cook for an additional fifteen minutes.

Taste for seasoning-- we added some tabasco at this point and more salt and pepper. Serve by itself or over rice.

2009-01-21T10:17:00.000-08:00

White Sandwich Bread(it was pretty late when it got to be photo time, so behold! the mess on my counter)

The other day, Deb posted a recipe for light wheat bread, sandwich bread, and I was inspired. I could make our sandwich bread. Right? I mean, we go through about one a week, for toast, sandwiches, quick breadcrumbs, etc. Over the course of a year, that is a lot of mediocre bread. So I read her recipe about three times, remembered that I couldn’t get bread flour in my neighborhood (I've tried), and shut my browser for another day, a day that would be a little warmer than 9 degrees so I could venture to the Whole Foods in Tribeca.

But I had it in my head that I was going to make bread, so I started googling and came across Julia Child’s basic white bread recipe. I haven’t had white bread in a while, but I figured what the hell. Home made white bread had to be delicious? It's homemade bread for God's sake!

I started this at 5:30 pm, after I got home from work and by 9:30 I was pulling two insanely beautiful loaves of bread out of the oven, and left them, loosely covered with a tea towel, overnight to cool. The next morning we eagerly cut in to them for breakfast toast, and let me tell you, this is a tasty loaf of bread. Firm, but not dense, not sweet like store bought white bread, and toasted, it had such a lovely crumb. I’ve been eating it all week—peanut butter sandwiches, toast with jam, toast with butter, and my strange but true favorite sandwich of cream cheese and sprouts.

And it was easy, so easy. I’m still dying to try Deb’s whole wheat loaf, but for now, I love having homemade bread in the freezer at the ready for all of my sandwich needs.

White Sandwich Bread

Recipe from Baking with Julia and here

2 1/2 cups warm water (105-115F)
1 package active dry yeast (.25 oz)
1 tbsp sugar
6-7 cups ap flour
1 tbsp salt
4 tbsp butter, softened

Combine 1/2 cup water, yeast and sugar in a large bowl and let stand until foamy - about 10 minutes. Add remaining water, flour and salt to yeast mixture and mix with a wooden spoon (or in a mixer) until dough cleanly away from the sides of the bowl. Knead in butter until dough is smooth and not sticky. Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface and continue kneading for an additional minute or two. Shape dough into a ball and place in a lightly oiled bowl to rise until doubled, about 1- 1 1/2 hours.

Butter two 8×4 inch loaf pans and set aside. Place dough on a lightly floured surface and divide in two equal portions. Roll out in to a rectangle, roughly 9 by 12. Take the shorter end of the rectangle towards you and fold it as if you are folding a letter, in thirds. Pinch the seam to seal, and fold over both ends by about half an inch to seal those in too. Put in your loaf pans. Cover loaf pans lightly with oiled plastic wrap and allow to rise until doubled in size, about 1 hour. Dough will rise above the lip of the pan.

Meanwhile, preheat oven to 375F.

Place loaves in oven and bake for 35-40 minutes. After 35 minutes, use an instant read thermometer to check the internal temperature of the bread. It will read 200F when the loaves are done. If you do not have an instant read themometer (meat thermometer), simply cook the loaves for 40 minutes and keep an eye on your oven thermometer to make sure the temperature remains constant.

Remove loaves from pans immediately and let cool completely (2-3 hours) before slicing.

Makes 2 loaves

I usually slice bread and then keep it in the freezer, plucking out a slice or two as needed. It lasts a lot longer this way. Also, if you want to bring a sandwich to work, like I do, toast the bread at home, make your sandwich, and wrap it up. It won't be warm when you eat it later, but it will still be toasty and soft.

2009-01-16T10:20:00.000-08:00

Tomato Lentil Soup

From before I was born until I was 23, my grandmother and mother ran a small lunch spot on the Jersey shore. They only served lunch, and it was mostly soup, and pita stuffed sandwiches, along with some desserts and a variety of bottled drinks that I have rarely seen since (Joe Tea, where are you now?). But this is where I learned to make soup, one of the few things I can make now without the guidance of a recipe. The problem, of course, of learning to make soup in a luncheonette is that I only know how to make soup in restaurant style quantities. Inevitably, my husband and I will eat soup for a week straight for lunch, and I will still have a quart or two tucked in the freezer.

Yesterday, I finally found myself with a version of my tomato-vegetable lentil soup that is scaled down enough to share with the internet. You will have leftovers, and if you want to double it, you will also have two quarts in the freezer. But no matter how you decide to make it, you should make it. It is ridiculously easy, and if you’re the type that keeps lentils in the house, along with some vegetables in the freezer, you can through this together in under 30 minutes, Rachael Ray style (eh). It is inexpensive, simple, involves no chopping if you don’t want to, versatile, and so healthy and so good. We ate it for dinner last night with grilled cheese on homemade (!) bread (!) (we'll get to that) and it was the perfect dinner for this freaky Minnesota style weather New York seems to be having. And it was comforting while I bawled happy tears to the news coverage that 150+ passengers survived a crash landing in the Hudson River. Could yesterday have been any more miraculous?

Tomato Lentil Soup with Vegetables
¾ c. red lentils
1 28 ounce can of crushed tomatoes
Tsp of dried thyme
1 c. corn, frozen
1 c. peas, frozen (I use petite peas)
½ c. small pasta (acini de pepe, pastina, ditalini) *
Salt
Pepper

Optional: sriracha, parmesan, onion, potatoes, sweet potatoes, other vegetables

In a large pot (I use a 4 qt dutch oven), add the can of crushed tomatoes, refill the can with water, and add to the pot as well. Add lentils, corn, peas, and pasta, along with thyme, pepper, and lots of salt. Bring to a boil, and reduce to a simmer until the lentils are cooked, and somewhat broken down, and the soup has thickened some. The pasta will have cooked in the water and tomatoes. If too thick, add more water as needed. Season with salt and pepper (generously—it will need a lot of salt).

Variations.
-Top the soup with grated cheese for a minestrone effect.
-Top with sriracha or your favorite hot sauce--sriracha is particularly outstanding.
-Add onion by sautéing it in the dutch oven with a little oil before adding the tomatoes.
-Add potatoes or sweet potatoes to the soup in a small dice with the other vegetables. Add a little more water since the potatoes will certainly thicken up the soup.
-Add any other vegetable that suits you. I’ve added cauliflower, celery, carrots—whatever you have around and feel like including.

*Lately I have been using a Harvest Grains mix I picked up at Trader Joes. It includes Israeli couscous, spinach orzo, red quinoa, and I think yellow split peas. It works great in this soup.

2009-01-13T09:32:00.000-08:00

Giant Chipotle White Beans

Just a quick dispatch to say that this weekend, I made Heidi’s giant white beans in chipotle tomato sauce and frankly, I think you should too. This is so healthy, so tasty, so delicious, so smoky from the chipotle, so creamy, so good that you should rush right out and buy a bag of giant lima beans and get them soaking. This is a dish intensive recipe (the bowl to soak the beans, the pot to cook the beans, the food processor to make the pesto, the other pot to make the tomato sauce, the large baking dish to bring it all together), but not as time intensive as I thought. Sure, you won’t feel like making this on a Tuesday night after work, this is more of a Sunday afternoon recipe. But. the beans cooked in about an hour and fifteen minutes and during that time, I made everything else, cleaned the spinach, and washed the dishes, so that when the beans were done, I was able to throw everything in the oven.

And just a note that Heidi didn’t mention—this is pretty cheap. I’m sure Rancho Gordo beans would have been stunning in this, and I am due to order another shipment soon, but the Goya dried beans I used were fine and came in around 1.25. Can of crushed tomatoes, 77 cents at the madhouse that is the ShopRite can-can sale. Parsley, one dollar (which I used instead of cilantro). Can of chipotles, 1.79. Spinach, 2.00 (and you'll have plenty leftover for another meal). Feta, 3.49 (but other cheeses would work just as well and be cheaper). You probably have olive oil and salt at home. So this whole meal came in around 10 dollars and change, and we got six huge servings out of this. My husband and I are eating the last two containers today for lunch, and I’m already thinking about making it again next week.

Recipe can be found at 101 Cookbooks here.

2009-01-12T09:27:00.000-08:00

Orange Almond Blueberry Muffins

Like most, when I first heard of the new cookbook Baked by the gentlemen who run the bakery of the same name, I was, well, smitten. I asked my husband repeatedly to pick it up for me for Christmas, and he did just that. The problem with getting a cookbook for Christmas, especially a baking book, is that you are sugared out. I had eaten more cookies, marshmallows, fudge, brittle, and candy that any one girl should and the idea of breaking out the butter and baking again was a bit nauseating.

Luckily, that feeling passes around, well, January 11th. Yesterday was supposed to be a snow day (more of a dusting with a sheet of ice day), and snow days call for muffins, scones, coffee cakes, and popovers for breakfast. I was planning on making our favorite blueberry muffin with my stash of frozen blueberries from this summer, but I was missing sour cream and milk, and didn’t have enough half and half to fudge the recipe in to a higher fat version. So I flipped open Baked, hoping they would have a muffin recipe I had possibly overlooked, and oh, did they.

Orange-Almond-Blueberry Muffins. Well, if you insist.

The recipe uses your usual muffin base of flour, sugar, egg, and milk, but fudges it from there in to a delicious, light muffin that actually feels somewhat virtuous (even though, who are we kidding, a muffin is still just cake). Two egg whites are used rather than the whole egg, and a quarter cup of almond meal is added to give that delicious, nutty background flavor. Orange zest and orange juice sit in the background and it isn’t swimming with blueberries, but provides just the right amount of familiar tartness.

I made some minor modifications to the recipe, such as not grinding my own almond meal, and using natural sugar (sugar in the raw) for a little added sugar crust, and I think these muffins would lend themselves to other additions as well. In fact, I think next time I make them, I may try my hand with whole wheat pastry flour as well, to increase the nuttiness factor that the almond meal provides.

So, in summary, yes you should buy Baked. And try these muffins too.

Orange Almond Blueberry Muffins
Adapted from Baked

Zest of 1 orange, about 1 Tbs.
½ c. fresh squeezed orange juice
½ c. whole milk
2 egg whites
4 tbs butter, melted and cooled
2 c. flour
¾ c. demerara sugar, or sugar in the raw
2 tsp. baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
¼ c. almond meal, or ¼ c. of almonds, ground in a food processor until the consistency of flour
½ tsp salt
¾ cup blueberries

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees and butter a 12 cup muffin pan.

In a medium bowl, combine flour, almond meal, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Add blueberries and toss to coat—this will prevent them from sinking to the bottom of every muffin. Set aside.

In another bowl, combine melted butter, orange zest, juice, and egg whites. Stir, then add milk and stir well—there is a chance the milk could curdle against the orange juice, but if stirred well, and added to the dry ingredients quickly, it will be fine.

Create a well in the dry ingredient bowl and add the wet, stirring until just combined. Fill each muffin cup ¾ of the way full and bake until edges are brown and a tester comes out clean, about 15 to 20 minutes.

2009-01-09T06:02:00.000-08:00

Mark Bittman's simplest black bean burgers

We've been trying our hand at actually planning out our meals each week, rather than stopping at the store almost every day on the way home, or staring blankly at the freezer and thinking, screw it, before we have popcorn and triscuits for dinner. I work from home on Fridays so most Friday mornings, I sort through what we have, what is kicking around in the freezer (usually leftover curries and soups) and go from there.

The only problem in this system is that sometimes, you have no desire for what you planned on eating. None. Yesterday was going to be homemade pasta (we have a big batch we made in December and froze) with bolognese sauce, also in the freezer. We bought a couch this week, we're counting on the freezer until we get paid again. Anyway, it just didn't sound good. Plan b was a pre-made Indian dinner from Trader Joe's that we keep around for just these emergencies. While it is tasty, it still didn't whet my appetite.

Then I remembered Mark Bittman's simplest bean burgers from How to Cook Everything Vegetarian.

These burgers are dead simple. You throw a can of drained black beans, an onion, some chili powder, an egg, and half a cup of oats in the food processor, blitz, and shape in to patties. It is perfect for the nights you can't think of what to eat, because in our apartment at least, those are all staples of our pantry. You then throw the burger on the stove until it browns on each side, and serve. I ate it simply last night, on a piece of toast with some provolone cheese and a side of sweet potato wedges. The burger is denser than your usual veggie burger, and tastes delicious. I love the chili powder and what it adds to the background, a smoky, slightly spicy presence.

You can vary these endlessly, with different spices, adding cheese to the mixture, making them vegan by omitting the egg and using some leftover mashed potatoes instead. And, bonus, the recipe yields more burgers than you can eat in one night, so this dead simple pantry burger also becomes a freezer burger in case of dinner emergencies, or if you buy that awesome chair that goes with your new couch....

Mark Bittman's Dead Simple Bean Burgers

from How to Cook Everything Vegetarian

One 15 oz can of black beans, drained

1/2 c. rolled oats

1 onion, quartered

1 tbs. chili powder

1 egg

Salt (I use about half a tablespoon)

Pepper (maybe six grinds worth)

Place all of the ingredients in food processor and pulse until combined in to a chunky mixture. Now, I've made these twice and neither time did it come anywhere near to chunky, it went to dust in minutes. So, if yours are too thin to shape in to patties, dump out the contents of the food processor bowl in to another bowl and add more rolled oats until it comes together. Refrigerate for 20 minutes before shaping.

If your patties came together with no trouble, shape them to the size you would like (I like them larger and usually wind up with about six). Pan fry the patties on each side until brown.

The remaining bean burgers can be frozen for a couple of months, but I betcha they won't last that long.

2009-01-08T09:29:00.001-08:00

I just need to warn you that the picture is ugly. The food is amazing, life changing, who knew I even liked leeks stuff, but the picture… well…

I just kept forgetting to take a good picture. And know what, I’ve made this four times now and I still never once paused to take a picture for you. I know, awful, but it was too good to slow down for.

This goat cheese leek tart was published in Bon Appetit a couple of months ago by the lovely Orangette, and can I just say, I love her Cooking Life column. I love her blog too, duh, but her column has caused a bit of chaos in my magazine reading. I have a bordering on OCD habit that I have to read straight through a magazine. Article continued on page 120? Well, I will wait until I get to page 120 to resume reading it. But when I receive a new Bon Appetit, I have to find her column first and read it. Then I can go back and read straight through the magazine.

[I wonder if this is because the last page of magazines is always my favorite? They always have such a good one page something on the last page. An analysis of “don’ts” in the clothing world. Ten things you can’t live without in Domino. Little interviews with celebrities who cook. Maybe it is the publisher in me, but that last page is always such a perfect encapsulation of the magazine.]

So, this tart. It’s amazing. The leeks cook down to become a sweet, buttery mess that smells delicious. Combined with four ounces of goat cheese, some cream and butter, your stomach will start growling as soon as it hits the oven. But then, when you actually get to eat it—pure bliss. The creamy goat cheese, the salty-sweet leeks, the buttery crust… it is amazing. It is equally amazing the next day for lunch when people will walk by your desk slowly to try to get a glimpse of what smells so good.

Please. Make this tart.

Goat Cheese Leek Tart
from the lovely Molly, courtesy of Bon Appetit

Molly recommends using bucheron, or an aged crumbly goat cheese. It is amazing with bucheron. It is equally amazing with Whole Foods brand creamy goat cheese, so work with what you have

Crust:
4 tablespoons (or more) ice water
3/4 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
1 1/2 cups unbleached all purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup (1 stick) plus 1 tablespoon chilled unsalted butter

Filling:
1/2 cup whole milk
1/2 cup heavy whipping cream (note: I've also made it with one cup of half and half instead of milk and heavy cream, and it came out beautifully)
1 large egg
1 large egg yolk
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup crumbled aged goat cheese (such as Bûcheron), rind trimmed
1 1/2 cups Leek Confit

Crust:
Combine 4 tablespoons ice water and cider vinegar in small bowl. Blend flour and salt in processor. Add butter and cut in using on/off turns until mixture resembles coarse meal. With machine running, slowly add water-vinegar mixture, processing until moist clumps form. If dough seems dry, add ice water by teaspoonfuls.

Gather dough into ball; flatten into disk. Wrap in plastic and refrigerate at least 2 hours. DO AHEAD: Can be made 3 days ahead. Keep refrigerated. Allow dough to soften slightly at room temperature before rolling out.

Position rack in center of oven and preheat to 375°F. Roll dough out on lightly floured work surface to 12-inch round. Transfer to 9-inch-diameter tart pan with removable bottom. Press dough onto bottom and up sides. Fold in overhang and press to extend dough 1/2 inch above sides of pan. Line pan with foil and dried beans or pie weights. Bake until dough looks dry and set, about 30 minutes. Remove foil and beans and continue to bake until crust is pale golden, 20 to 25 minutes longer. Remove from oven and cool while preparing filling.
Note: keep an eye on your prebaked crust. Mine took far less than 30 minutes, but I think my oven is hotter than normal.

Filling:
Whisk milk, cream, egg, egg yolk, and salt in medium bowl to blend. Sprinkle 1/4 cup cheese over bottom of warm crust; spread leek confit over and sprinkle with remaining cheese. Pour milk mixture over. Bake until filling has puffed, is golden in spots, and center looks set, 35 to 40 minutes. Transfer to rack; cool slightly. Remove pan sides. Serve warm or at room temperature (you won't be able to wait for room temperature).

2009-01-05T06:33:00.000-08:00

Bastardized Hoppin' John
Oh, hey guys, what’s up? Yeah… December. How bout it? It kind of kicked my ass. When your family is as big as mine is, it takes the better part of December to buy all of the gifts, bake all of the cookies for the distant relatives and hungry coworkers, and no matter how many times I say I’ll begin shopping in October this year, nay, September, I still find myself feverishly clicking through Amazon or standing in a Macy’s wondering why I do this every year.

So let’s get past that, shall we? This is a new year after all. 2009. Hell yeah.

Per southern tradition, and my household is 50% southern born and bred (the other 50% is Jersey born and bred), we had to eat black eyed peas on New Year’s Day for health and wealth and other good luck. I even remembered to pick up a bag during my last raid of Kalustyan’s, so I thought I was so on top of the game. Yet when I went online to find a way to cook them, I realized I had clearly dropped the ball by not picking up salt pork or some other form of pig to cook with them. Plus, the sad fact is, I try not to eat the pig at all, even though bacon-I-still-love-you-and-miss-you.

I stumbled on a recipe for Hoppin’ John on veganweb, and it sounded good, plus, score! I had all of the ingredients in house. I doctored it up a little and served it over jalapeno cornbread* and after gorging ourselves, we decided we felt sufficiently lucky for 2009. The tomato brings together the rice and the peas, the spices were perfect in terms of freshness, and the smoked paprika really livened things up. The amount of salt this needed was outrageous, but in the end, it was salty, smoky, creamy, and a really complete meal.

And was it lucky? Well, we went sofa shopping the other day, and managed to buy a floor model of the one we wanted for $250! If that’s how this is going to work, I’ll eat black eyed peas every day.

Vegan Hoppin’ John
Adapted from the web, however I can’t find the link at the moment. Please forgive me—I’ll update when I find it.

1 lb. black eyed peas
1 ½ cups of brown rice
1 ½ c. crushed tomato
½ an onion, chopped
2 tbs olive oil
1 garlic clove, chopped

Handful of spinach leaves
½ tsp thyme, dried
½ tsp basil, fresh if you have it, dried is fine.
½ tsp smoked paprika
Ungodly amounts of salt
Black pepper

Put black eyed peas in a large pot and cover with water by about an inch. Bring to a boil and cook until tender, about 45 minutes. Keep an eye on them, however. They go from perfectly cooked to dust in seconds. Drain, and set aside.

Cook brown rice per that type of rice. Drain off any remaining water and set aside as well (feel free to dump it in the same bowl as the peas—they will be added at the same time).

In a large pot (are you using the same pot for each step because I did, and I didn’t even wash it in between, so go ahead and save those dishes), add the chopped onion with 2 tbs of olive oil and cook until translucent, or even a little brown. Add the chopped garlic clove and cook until that begins to brown. Add the tomato, thyme, and basil, and cook for 5 minutes to let everything come together. Add the peas and rice and stir to combine. Add the spinach. If it looks dry, add some more tomato or a little water.

Add more salt that you think, fresh ground pepper, and paprika and stir again to combine. Serve over cornbread, possibly with some sour cream or grated cheddar if you aren’t actually vegan, just vegetarian.

2008-11-25T08:33:00.000-08:00

Corn-Black Pepper "Crackers"

One day, in June I think, we received a ridiculously heavy package from my in-laws. We were stumped as to what it could be, since our birthdays were in August and October. We opened it to discover two pounds of cornmeal. Huh.

It turns out it was from Yates Mill in North Carolina, a place they had stopped at lots of times for various items, but had never managed to arrive when the cornmeal was available. This sells out usually in the first month it is available. This year, however, they hit the jackpot and we were now all stupid with cornmeal.

So, it is now almost six months later and we have only used half a pound, and we had better get cracking before we get another two pounds in the mail. So when I saw a recipe for corn and black pepper crackers in the New York Times, recently, I bookmarked it. The recipe was from an article about bringing the bread basket back to thanksgiving, and, my carb loving body had no idea it had gone missing. Regardless, these crackers were on deck.

They smelled delicious, and looked beautiful when they came out of the oven, but they didn’t snap. I made the next batch thinner, and they still came out of the oven more cornbread than cracker. They were still warm and toasty and delicious, but they were almost like a cornbread Madeline. I ate five, with some slices of sharp cheddar on the side, as a Sunday afternoon snack.

I saw the recipe sitting on the kitchen table the next day and threw it out. I figured that there won’t be a reason to make these again when I could make cornbread or crackers. But later that day, as a pre-dinner snack (Lee gets home later than me and I can’t always wait), I found myself throwing a handful in the toaster oven to recrisp them, and again slicing some cheddar to go with them.

So I think they may have a place in the recipe binder after all.

Corn and Black Pepper Crackers
By MELISSA CLARK for the New York Times

Butter for parchment, plus 3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
1/2 cup medium-grind cornmeal
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon coarsely ground black pepper
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
3/4 cup milk
1 large egg.

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Line 3 baking sheets with parchment paper; butter parchment paper, or use nonstick liners.

2. Sift cornmeal, flour, sugar, baking powder, pepper and salt into a large bowl.

3. In a separate bowl, beat milk with egg. Add to dry ingredients all at once and mix together just until batter is free of lumps. Stir in melted butter.

4. Drop batter by the tablespoonful onto prepared baking sheets. Bake until edges are a dark golden brown, 10 to 15 minutes.

Yield: About 36 crackers.

To make ahead: Prepare batter and refrigerate overnight and up to 2 days, tightly covered in plastic wrap. Drop cold batter onto prepared baking sheets and bake at 425 degrees until edges are a dark golden brown, about 25 minutes. Or bake crackers the day before serving and re-crisp them in a 400-degree oven for 10 minutes.

2008-11-24T12:17:00.000-08:00

Azteca Squash Soup

This year, we had a farmer’s market every Monday right outside of my daily train and I had such a crush on it. I felt so European, hopping off of my (dirty, crowded) train in to a (concrete, cold, outside of a Duane Reade) street market. I would take out my RuMe reusable grocery bag and fill it with strawberries and lettuce, or sweet corn and eggplants, or more recently, butternut squash, cranberries, leeks, Brussel sprouts, and sweet potatoes. I would walk home, filling in the gaps in groceries with pit stops at the little grocery store along the way, and then drop my mustard colored bag on my kitchen table and roast some sort of root vegetable to accompany dinner.

Is professional farmer’s market shopper a job? I would love it.

Today is *sniff* the last day of the market this year, until it returns in the spring, and it will be a cold, farm fresh butternut squash-less winter.

To take advantage of one of those squash, I decided to make a soup that showed up in the most recent Bon Appetit. It was one of those recipes you just rip out, knowing you'll make it very soon, and hang it on the fridge. The recipe is time intensive, but on a lazy Sunday when all you’re doing is watching Gilmore Girls DVDs for the millionth time, you have time to let a butternut squash roast for an hour and a half.

So anyway, this soup I was so excited about? It has potential, but it is kind of meh. Not bad, but nothing terrible exciting about it. I added sriracha to up the flavor a little, but I need to make it again. I need to up the squash, top it with avocado slices, and maybe some crushed tortilla chips. I think then I would actually love the soup.

Don’t take that as a negative review—I ate it all. But I think it just needed a little more oomph and I’m looking forward to making it again with said oomph.

Azteca Squash Soup
From Bon Appetit Magazine, December 2008.

From Rancho La Puerta in Tecate, Mexico.

1 1/2 lbs butternut squash, halved lengthwise, seeded
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
1 3/4 cups chopped onions
1 cup chopped celery
2 garlic cloves, chopped
6 cups vegetable broth, divided
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 cup canned black bean, drained and rinsed
1 cup frozen corn kernels
1 cup red bell pepper, chopped (about one medium red pepper)
1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro, plus
fresh cilantro stem (to garnish)
1 tablespoon chopped fresh thyme
1 teaspoon minced serrano chili, seeded
coarse sea salt
plain fat-free yogurt

Directions

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Spray baking sheet with nonstick cooking spray. Sprinkle cut halves of squash with salt and pepper. Arrange, cut side down, on prepared sheet. Roast squash until tender, about 1 1/2 hours. Turn squash cut side up and cool. Scoop squash out into medium bowl.

Heat oil in heavy large pot over medium heat. Add chopped onion, and sauté until pale golden, about 10 minutes. Mix in chopped celery and garlic cloves. Add 1 cup broth. Cover and simmer for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add squash, 5 cups broth, and cumin. Cover and simmer 20 minutes to blend flavors.

Working in batches, puree squash soup in blender until smooth. When finished pureeing all batches, return all soup to pot. This squash soup to desired consistency with more vegetable broth. Add black beans, frozen corn, chopped red bell pepper, cilantro, thyme, and serrano chile. Cover soup and simmer 10 minutes. Season soup to taste with salt and pepper.

Ladle soup into bowls. Garnish each with dollop of yogurt and sprig of cilantro.

2008-11-18T10:28:00.001-08:00

Butterscotch Ice Cream

We’ve all seen, eaten, and likely made apple crisp before. It isn’t a mystery—apples, oatmeal crumble topping, and oh, the butter. Nothing wrong with the apple crisp. But when I recently made one on a particularly mild fall day, all I wanted in the world was ice cream to go on top of it. I considered heading out to pick up a pint of Haagen Daaz vanilla, my go to cobbler and crisp topper, but then I got it in my head that I wanted butterscotch ice cream. Then my husband came up with the greatest idea I’ve ever heard:

“Why don’t we turn that butterscotch pot de crème recipe you always make in to ice cream?”

Why don’t we, indeed…

I have made these custards more times than I should really admit—I adore them. They are deeply flavored from the dark muscovado, they are rich, they are cozy, they are the dessert equivalent of curling up on the couch with a warm blanket, fuzzy socks, and your favorite sitcom. They make me happy. Turning them in to ice cream though? Why hadn’t I thought of that? Why hadn’t I done it every other day all summer long?

It was perfect. It was ridiculously decadent, and so rich you felt like you had to sit down after a spoonful. But it was absolutely perfect. The tart Granny Smith apples that made up the crisp were the perfect counterpart for the butterscotch ice cream. We fought each other for the last spoonfuls.

Butterscotch Pots de Crème

Adapted from Orangette

1 ½ cups heavy cream

6 Tbsp. dark muscovado sugar (I found mine at Whole Foods, but it is also available at Amazon)

¼ tsp. salt

6 Tbsp. water

2 Tbsp. demerara sugar

4 large egg yolks

½ tsp. vanilla extract

In a small heavy saucepan, combine cream, muscovado sugar, and salt. Place over medium heat and bring just to a simmer, stirring until the sugar is dissolved. Remove from the heat.

Combine water and demerara sugar in a medium (2-quart) heavy saucepan over medium heat. Cook, stirring until sugar is dissolved. Continue to cook, stirring occasionally, until browned and bubbly, about 5 minutes. (To gauge the color of the mixture, it may help to tilt the pan a little, so that the liquid pools on one side.) Remove from the heat and carefully add the cream mixture, whisking until combined.

In a large bowl, whisk together egg yolks and vanilla. Add hot cream mixture in a thin stream, whisking constantly. Set a fine-mesh sieve over a 1-quart glass measuring cup, and pour the custard through the sieve. Let the mixture come to room temperature, then cover with saran wrap and chill in the refrigerator until cold, a few hours (ideally overnight, but we don’t always plan ahead and a couple of hours will usually do it).

Chill in an ice cream maker according to manufacturer’s instructions.

Yield: not enough. A little less than a pint.

2008-11-13T08:14:00.000-08:00

Smoked Salmon Benedict A very distinct change happened at some point in my life, and I no longer enjoyed straight up scrambled eggs, but I was now a yolk eater. This wasn’t exclusionary; I still eat scrambled eggs on bagels, on an English muffin, really in any sandwich form. But the poached egg became my new go too. In explaining this to Lee, I think I actually referred to the poached egg as the great unifier. And while it probably isn’t as grand as that, it isn’t entirely false. There is something incredibly satisfying about breaking the yolk and coating your plate of potatoes, your eggs Florentine, your benedicts of the world, your asparagus, and making it a place of poached deliciousness.

Listen, I’m sorry. I know. The poached egg haters of the world are all gagging right now. I live with one. I get it.

Which brings us to weekend breakfast. Last weekend was pretty rainy on Saturday. Not wanting to stay inside all day, but not feeling so motivated to do something big, we hopped in the car and drove to Trader Joe’s in Westfield. The one in Edgewater is closer, but Westfield has wine. We picked up a random assortment of food as one is apt, no, required to do at Trader Joes. Frozen petite peas mingled with tofu mingled with Indian food kits, among other things, in our cart. A few bottles of cheap wine hopped in as well, along with Trader Joe’s brand hard cider, dark beer, fingerling potatoes, fresh herbs, and chocolate covered peanut butter pretzels. And, excitedly, a small package of smoked salmon.

Sunday morning we got up and got to work on making smoked salmon benedict. We first had it at a little breakfast place in Jersey City, but since then it seems to be cropping up everywhere. English muffins went in the toaster, smoked salmon was arranged just so (three ounces was perfect for two people), and Lee got to work poaching eggs, perfectly if I may say so. These isn’t much in the way of a recipe for this, but I have to say, please, if you haven’t ever had this, please try it. The smoked salmon is salty and stands up to the bread and the poached egg. The egg yolk brings the whole thing together. You could top it with chopped chives, or hollandaise, but really, it doesn’t need a thing other than some cracked black pepper.

I’m obsessed with the perfect bite. I like to find that perfect combination of flavors and save it for the end. With smoked salmon benedict, every bite is the perfect bite.

2008-11-12T13:01:00.001-08:00

Pumpkin Tea Cake

I take a yoga class on Saturday mornings that runs for two hours and I consistently walk out of the studio absolutely ravenous. I’ve heard aerobic activity makes you less hungry, but I’m not sure what it is about yoga that makes me want to eat everything in site. So on my walk home, bangs all sweaty and mat thrown over my shoulders, I stopped at the little Korean produce stand, looking for something to bring home for lunch. This never ends well when I’m this hungry, but that day wasn’t too far fetched. I picked up a ripe avocado, some blue corn tortilla chips, intending to make a quesadilla with the tortillas and pepperjack I already had in the house, and then I grabbed a can of pumpkin puree. Lee took the bag out of my hands when I got home in order to unload it, and I saw him look at the pumpkin puree but not question it.

He gets me.

So after lunch, and a shower, and a brief nap while watching Arrested Development, I returned to the kitchen to confront the pumpkin puree. I was ready for fall and fall means pumpkin. I pulled down the Tartine cookbook, a gift I received earlier in the year. This book is beautiful, and recipes run the gamut from banana cream pie to croissants that take two days to make. I looked over the pumpkin tea bread recipe, and decided that was the way to go.

I made some minor modifications, changing out some spices, and making the decision, a la Jamie Oliver’s pumpkin bread, to use mild olive oil instead of vegetable oil. Then I took the suggestion to top the bread with pepitas, and sprinkled the top with demerara rather then regular sugar to get a better crust.

This tea cake was pure decadence. It was incredibly moist, and the sugared pepitas added an amazing crunch. The cake was sweet, but not too sweet, and perfectly subtly spiced. It didn’t scream Fall in your face; it was a little bit of autumn in a loaf pan. I’m really looking forward to making this again. Maybe tonight.

Pumpkin Tea Cake
Adapted from Tartine, with a touch of Jamie at Home

You could use vegetable oil instead of olive, but I think the olive oil is great here. Just don’t use anything too aggressively peppery.

1 2/3 c. flour
1 ½ t. baking powder
½ t. baking soda
1 T. cinnamon
½ tsp. all spice
1 c. plus 2 T. pumpkin puree
1 c. olive oil
1 1/3 c. sugar
¾ tsp salt
3 eggs
2 tbs demerara (or Sugar in the Raw)
Pepitas (optional, but oh so good)

Pre-heat your oven to 325 degrees and place a rack in the middle of the oven. Butter a 9x5 loaf pan.

In a medium bowl, combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, allspice, sugar, and salt. Set aside.

In a separate bowl, combine pumpkin puree and oil. Add eggs one at a time, mixing to combine after each addition. Add the flour mixture and stir to combine. There is no need for a mixer with this recipe, a wooden spoon will do it. The mixture at this point will be like a thick puree.

Pour in to prepared loaf pan, and sprinkle two Tbs. of demerara sugar over the top. Sprinkle the top with pepitas. Bake until a tester comes out clean, about an hour.

2008-11-11T13:48:00.000-08:00

People, I have an announcement.

I made apple butter.

I cooked, and whirled, and cooked, and thickened, and reduced, and listened for the tell tale “plop, glug” that indicated it was finished.

I cleaned jars, sterilized them, left them in a 225 degree oven for an hour, and canned the apple butter in cute little squat 8 ounce jars.

I listened to the lids go pop, and I feel confident that no one I give this to will die from salmonella, botulism, or any of the other diseases that scare home canners.

I got a leg up on holiday presents, and then proceeded to order cute little tags from Etsy to tie around them.

But most importantly, I made apple butter. And it is good.

The recipe I used was from 101 Cookbooks, and I read over Orangette’s account of making it, along with The Wednesday Chef, who also provided advice.

2008-11-10T08:08:00.000-08:00

Gingerbread Cake

I never considered myself a fan of gingerbread—I built the houses, I ate the men, I rolled out the dough with my mom around Christmas and cut out shapes, but I never thought to myself, man I could go for some gingerbread. Then last year I made these molasses spice cookies, and found myself obsessed with ginger. Gingersnaps, spice cookies, gingerbread men. But I never got around to making a gingerbread cake, which I imagined would be the moist embodiment of everything I loved most: molasses, ginger, allspice, butter. Yes please.

A couple of Fridays ago, while working from home, I was reading Design*Sponge, one of my favorite websites, and her beautiful “In the Kitchen with…” feature. That day, she was in the kitchen with herself, and she made Martha Stewart’s Chocolate Swirl Gingerbread cake. I couldn’t wrap myself around the idea of chocolate and gingerbread, but the rest of the recipe sounded so good, I decided to skip the chocolate and try it anyway. Grace at D*S cautioned that it was a very molasses heavy cake and it may be too intense, but I like molasses so that sounded good to me.

So in the kitchen I went, and threw together this dead simple cake—melted butter, molasses, sugar. No need to cream the butter, this comes together in seconds with your bowl and wooden spoon. While it was baking, I was intrigued that my apartment wasn’t being overcome with the smell of goodness, but the timer went off, the knife came out clean, and this springy moist cake was finished baking.

The smell I was missing was unleashed when I cut in to the cake and I stopped what I was doing so I could make a pot of coffee: I felt confident this was a coffee drinking cake. And it was, along with intense, deeply flavored, and molasses-ey. It wasn’t too sweet, and the ginger really popped. But I still felt it needed something. Maybe it did need chocolate, but my gut still doesn’t think I would like that. Maybe a simple confectioner’s sugar glaze, or maybe a swipe of apple butter across the top? We finished the cake in two days, so don’t misinterpret this as a thumbs down. My husband has already asked that we make it again. Maybe next time a smidge less molasses is all, to take down the intensity a notch.

Gingerbread
(Adapted from Martha Stewart’s Everyday FOOD)

Ingredients:
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, plus more for pan
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup packed light-brown sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup molasses
1 large egg, lightly beaten

Directions
1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Butter an 8-inch square pan. In a bowl, combine flour, brown sugar, ginger, baking powder, salt, pepper, and cloves.

2. Melt the butter in the water in a small saucepan over medium heat, and stir mixture into the dry ingredients until smooth. Stir in molasses and egg.

3. Pour batter in to the prepared pan. Bake the cake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 30 minutes.

2008-07-22T11:50:00.000-07:00

I’m not sure where the recent adoration came from but I’m suddenly madly in love with artichokes. I’ve always eaten them, but growing up in an Italian family, eating an artichoke was basically eating a tasteless vehicle for breadcrumbs, butter, cheese, and more butter. For years, I thought an artichoke tasted exactly the same as parmigiano reggiano.

At the restaurant where I worked for years, we served a gigantic stuffed artichoke appetizer, artichokes the size of your head, boiled, topped with breadcrumbs and butter, and broiled under the heat until charred. At the restaurant my sister and I ate at the most while she was in school, I always ordered cannelloni, stuffed with ungodly amounts of cheese and studded with artichoke hearts. I recently began buying huge amounts of frozen artichoke hearts from Trader Joe’s, and, when no one Is around to judge me, I’ll eat only those for dinner, cooked with wine, lemon, and red pepper flakes.

So when I saw such pretty specimens at our local market, I was so excited to bring them home and have stuffed artichokes for dinner. Then I had performance anxiety—I’ve never cooked a whole artichoke myself.

Thanks to the internet, now you can pretty much always figure out how to cook something [has anyone else read the book Survivor by Chuck Palahniuk? I only remember it vaguely now, but people are always calling the main character to ask him how to eat things. I remember specifically one of those phone calls was in reference to how to eat an artichoke. I think he told them to put the discarded leaves in their front pocket…]. I trimmed the leaves, cut off the top, rubbed lemon all over that puppy, and boiled it.

But what to serve with it? I threw some leftover wedges of sweet potato in the oven to make fries, but I needed a sauce I decided. Then I remembered Molly’s post on meyer lemon aioli. Living in Jersey City and not having access to a meyer lemon tree, like it seems everyone in San Francisco does (really, people? All of you can just reach out your kitchen window and get a meyer lemon? I reach out my kitchen window, I grab fire escape), I made it with a regular lemon (and decreased the salt content somewhat as my lemon was no where near sweet).

Let me just say, I have never emulsified anything. All of my salad dressings break (and I usually just say, fuck it, and proceed anyway, because no one will know the oil didn’t emulsify when I’m just throwing it over a salad). But I mixed up this aioli painstakingly slow. I think it took 20 minutes to add all of the oil, and I whisked, whisked, whisked. At one point, I asked Lee for help, and he said, why don’t you just do this in the food processor? Well, duh, that sure would have been easier but at this point, I’m doing it by hand.

And you know what! It didn’t break! It was thick, luscious, roll around in it aioli (If you’re in to that sort of thing). Sure, you’re basically spooning straight up fat on to your artichoke, but it didn’t break! And all that whisking had to burn enough calories to eat it.

Recipe is located here.

If you are using regular lemons like me, half the amount of salt indicated.

2008-07-09T10:41:00.000-07:00

People, I can't even tell you how much I ignored this recipe and I still managed to pull this off. You know when you read the reviews on epicurious? And there is always someone who said, "Oh, I swapped out the flour for wheat bran, and since I am watching my cholesterol, I used eggbeaters, and I forgot to add the sugar. It was terrible." Then they give it one star, and everyone else berates them with, "If you didn't make the recipe, don’t rate it."

Well, that’s how I feel with these lemon pudding cakes. Yet, they were still amazing.

I had run out of butter. So I found myself scooping Earth Balance in to a tablespoon. Don't judge me because I own that. I love, love, love butter. I would eat Plugra on every piece of bread, cracker, pasta, finger I have. But when you find yourself smearing half a stick of butter on pancakes, you decide to use earth balance for the things you could cut a calorie or twenty on.

My egg whites wouldn't firm peak up. I think I got to slightly more than soft peaks, considered that a victory, wiped the worried sweat from my brow, and started folding.

The folding? More like mashing. I think that had to do with the lack of firm peaks.

The results though were somehow outstanding. You would never know all of the problems I had with it. The cake part baked on top, and some kind of miraculous separation took place and underneath the cake was light, not too tart lemon pudding. Pudding! It was like the cakes my mom used to bake for my sisters birthday--layers of pudding underneath cake and whipped cream. These cakes were divine. A little whipped cream, some berries, a spoon, some Wipe Out on a Tuesday night (guilty pleasure alert!), following an entirely too virtuous dinner of cold cucumber-corn soup and salad… Tuesday rules.

Lemon Pudding Cakes
Recipe from The Greyston Bakery Cookbook

3/4 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
3 large eggs, separated
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup skim milk
5 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon finely grated lemon zest
1/4 teaspoon salt
Fresh raspberries or blackberries, for serving

directions
Preheat the oven to 350°. Spray six 6-ounce ramekins with vegetable oil spray. In a medium bowl, whisk the sugar with the flour. In another bowl, whisk the egg yolks with the butter until well blended. Whisk in the milk, lemon juice and lemon zest. Pour the lemon mixture into the sugar mixture and whisk until smooth.

In a medium bowl, beat the egg whites with the salt until firm peaks form. Gently fold the egg whites into the lemon mixture. Pour the batter into the prepared ramekins and transfer them to a small roasting pan. Place the pan in the oven and pour in enough hot water to reach halfway up the sides of the ramekins.

Bake the pudding cakes for 35 minutes or until they are puffy and golden on top. Using tongs, transfer the ramekins to a rack to cool for 20 minutes. Serve the cakes in the ramekins or run a knife around the edge of each cake and unmold onto plates. Serve warm or at room temperature with the berries.

2008-04-02T08:16:00.000-07:00

So, where were we? Oh, where the hell did I go?

Well, there were 6 dentist appointments (SIX!) that finally ended with a completed root canal and a brand new shiny bridge. Then there was that jury duty summons—do you know people actually get put on juries? Everyone I know who ever had jury duty went for a day and then came home. But me? I get put on an armed robbery trial for two weeks. After two weeks of eating lunch in my car to get a break from the courthouse, I have never been so excited to return to my cubicle world. And I work in Newark, so that should say something.

Then Lee's parents came for a weather delayed visit, and we spend three days eating pizza at Otto, pizza and beer in Williamsburg, shopped, ate doughnuts, and took a long walk from the LES to the Chelsea Market where we ate soup and ciabatta rolls from Amy's. Then we went on a vegetable soup diet to recover (mostly from the doughnuts).

My best friend had a baby girl. My grandmother broke her arm. My car got two flat tires.

Oh, and we’re getting married in a little more than six weeks, so that has added a bit of stress. But I’ve fought through it thinking of the 10 glorious days in Hawaii we will have.

But I’ve been cooking… really. And tomorrow, I’ll bring it with these little lemon pudding cake/cakelets/tartlettes/I don’t know what to call them other than delicious. Last night, with Lee working late and our non-stick pan deciding to stick and ruining dinner, all I wanted to do was eat a cake and go to bed. But I’ll take some pictures tonight as I eat the last ones.

In the meantime, some thoughts:

Is there anywhere in the tri-state area to buy Saint Benoit yogurt? The packaging is so beautiful that I am now compelled to try to yogurt.

Does anyone else have a Green Pan? And did it work? I love it in concept, but ours stuck so badly after so short a time, that I’m curious if we got a dud. Or if it is one of those products that is charming by definition but fails on a tangible level?

I bought a sack of what I thought were clementines the other day at Garden of Eden. Turns out they were Delite mandarins, these tiny peelable mandarins, smaller than most clementines I’ve had this year. And oooh boy are they delicious. I just ate two as a midmorning snack. Sweet, but not too sweet, a little tart, 98% seedless, fun to peel, and fit nicely in your purse. I need to buy another bag stat.

2008-02-01T12:00:00.000-08:00

Cranberry Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies

We had a whirlwind week with a last minute flight to Atlanta for, sadly, a funeral but there was also lots of visiting with family, driving on mountain roads, and drinking of moonshine (!) which made the trip equal parts sad and lovely. Even under the worse circumstances, it is nice to see family, even your fiancee’s weird uncle who runs to his car to get the mason jar of white lightning at 3 am.

But, after driving two hours from where his family lives to the airport, waiting hours for our return flight (high winds in Newark, grr), and finally getting home at 8 pm after starting our journey at 11 am, I was spent. That night, I ate some granola and went to bed. Last night, we had pizza and watched the Lost premiere (love it!!). But today, I finally felt recovered. I worked from home, and when my sweet tooth struck, I was able to make my favorite cookie.

This cookie is from the Once Upon a Tart cookbook, a book that only has a handful of categories but all of the categories may as well be called “comfort food” to me. The varieties of soups, salads, sandwiches, cookies, scones, quickbreads, tarts… I want to try every recipe in the book, and, I’m likely well on my way. The secret ingredient to this cookie is wheat germ. It adds an airy crunch to the cookie, a crunch that I would have never expected to be my favorite thing in the world. I’ve made these cookies at least a dozen times by now. I made several dozen and sent them to friends to supplement their Thanksgiving tables. I make them whenever we have company. I almost always have a log of dough in the freezer that we slice up whenever the craving strikes (the recipe yields a LOT of cookie dough). And, once you get past the gut reaction of “wheat germ? In a cookie?” these will likely become one of your favorites as well.

Crunchy Dried Cranberry-Chocolate Chip Cookies

From Once Upon a Tart

2 sticks unsalted butter, softened

1 c. sugar

1 c. brown sugar

2 large eggs

1 tsp. vanilla extract

1 c. plus 2 tbs all-purpose flour

1/2 c. wheat germ

3 c. rolled oats (not quick cook or instant)

1 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 c. chocolate chips

1/2 c. dried cranberries

1 c. coarsely chopped walnuts (I usually skip this)

Position an oven rack in the center of your oven and preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Cream the butter and the sugars until fluffy. Beat in the eggs one at a time and the vanilla extract.

In a separate bowl, combine flour, wheat germ, oats, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet, using the paddle attachment of your mixer or a wooden spoon, until no flour is visible. Stir in the chocolate chips, cranberries, and nuts (if using).

Drop the cookies one and a half inches apart-- they will spread a good deal while baking. Bake the cookies for 18-20 minutes, if you made big cookies, or 10-12 minutes if you made smaller ones (smaller=1 tsp. dough. bigger=1/3 c. of dough). Bake until they are all golden brown-- crispy is better with these cookies.

2008-01-24T11:07:00.000-08:00

Graham Cracker Chocolate Chip Cookies

One December day, a couple of years ago, Lee was going to meet me at our neighborhood florist after work to pick out a Christmas tree. It was freezing and I stood on the corner, pacing and hopping in place to stay warm. He finally arrived from the opposite direction I was expecting, bearing a brown paper bag. He had gotten there early and rather than standing around freezing (like me), he wandered around the block, and did I know there was a new cookie place on the corner of Columbus and Jersey? And he had bought me two graham cracker chocolate chip cookies.

I devoured them and loved them. Chocolate chip cookies tend to fail on a few levels for me. I don’t want them chewy but most places tend towards the oversized, chewy variety. They also tend to be very pale for my liking, without enough depth of flavor. I swear, in a mediocre undercooked chocolate chip cookie, I can taste the flour. When I make a chocolate chip cookie, I add espresso powder and bourbon to liven up the flavor and add some depth. These graham cracker cookies, however, were everything I wanted them to be. Buttery, crispy, and not anemic and flour-ey. I was in love.

Fast forward two years and I finally decided to try my hand at making them. I took the standard toll-house cookie recipe, subbed out some of the flour for ground graham crackers, rolled up a sample batch of 6, and baked them. They spread out to thin and seemed almost greasy. I scrapped the batch. I added more flour to the dough and tried again. They still spread out on the thin side but they were perfect. They had everything I had loved in the bakery cookies along with the crispy finish and extra chocolate chips (which, frankly, never hurt anyone).

I’m too embarrassed to admit how quickly we finished these.

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 c. ground graham crackers (pulsing in the food processor is the swiftest way to acquire these, other than buying them already ground).
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup (2 sticks, 1/2 pound) butter, softened
3/4 cup granulated [white] sugar
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 eggs
2 cups (12-ounce package) Semi-Sweet Chocolate Morsels

COMBINE flour, graham crackers, baking soda and salt in small bowl. Beat butter, granulated sugar, brown sugar and vanilla in large mixer bowl. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition; gradually beat in flour mixture. Stir in morsels. Drop by rounded tablespoon onto ungreased baking sheets.

BAKE in preheated 375-degree [Fahrenheit] oven for 9 to 11 minutes or until golden brown. Let stand for 2 minutes; remove to wire racks to cool completely

2008-01-17T08:55:00.000-08:00

Alton Brown's Overnight Cinnamon Rolls

Lee is, quite simply, addicted to cinnamon rolls. He tells these rather disturbing stories about his diet when he was an athlete in high school and college—breakfasts that involve a roll of cinnamon rolls, or a roll of biscuits, and an egg, and then a stop at Arby’s (Hardee’s? I unfortunately can’t remember this key detail). As a girl who drank carnation instant breakfast for breakfast, every day, for four years, I feel ill thinking about that much food. An entire roll of Pillsbury cinnamon rolls. Shiver.

Over the course of the last year, we have tried to stop eating any processed or pre-made food. It isn’t a severe rule—yes, I did try to make my own crackers but in the end I would rather have Nabisco make them—but we stopped buying Lean Cuisines for lunch, pre-made pancake mixes, pasta sauce in a jar, frozen pizza, or even pizza dough (we make this once a week) and made as much as we could from scratch. For that reason, Pillsbury has taken a loss from us.

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We had this cinnamon roll recipe bookmarked for, oh, hmm, forever, and never got around to making it. It was too fussy I decided, and too much work. I mean, why can’t you just let the cinnamon rolls rise for half an hour, why does it have to be in the closed oven over a pan of simmering water? But, there were predictions of a snow storm recently (that never came to be) and we were in the mood for a snow storm breakfast. So we kneaded the stickiest dough ever for ten minutes* and let it rise, rolled it out, and I let Lee demonstrate his natural propensity for rolling cinnamon rolls. They sat overnight as such and then we proofed them in the morning in the closed oven with the blah blah hot water.

They would have to be far superior to all other cinnamon rolls to make all of those steps worthwhile, I decided as I sat down with two on my plate, covered in a thin glaze of cream cheese frosting. They were. They were warm and gooey in the centers, crisp on the outside and the warm cinnamon oozed out with every bite. I found myself scraping up any bits that may have been left on my plate and then I got up and ate another one. That was, however, the last thing I ate until dinner, which was fish and vegetables in an attempt to undo breakfast.

This isn’t a breakfast that you make often, but if you are in the mood to wow your brunch guests, and have nothing to do the night before except watch dough rise and watch Superbad again, these will impress.

*My mixer started making a strange grinding noise the next day. It was replaced about a week later when I told KitchenAid what it sounded like. Best. Warranty. Ever

Recipe from Food Network

Dough:

4 large egg yolks, room temperature

1 large whole egg, room temperature

2 ounces sugar, approximately 1/4 cup

3 ounces unsalted butter, melted, approximately 6 tablespoons

6 ounces buttermilk, room temperature

20 ounces all-purpose flour, approximately 4 cups, plus additional for dusting

1 package instant dry yeast, approximately 2 1/4 teaspoons

1 1/4 teaspoons kosher salt

Vegetable oil or cooking spray

Filling:

8 ounces light brown sugar, approximately 1 cup packed

1 tablespoon ground cinnamon

Pinch salt

3/4-ounce unsalted butter, melted, approximately 1 1/2 tablespoons

Icing:

2 1/2 ounces cream cheese, softened, approximately 1/4 cup

3 tablespoons milk

5 1/2 ounces powdered sugar, approximately 1 1/2 cups

For the dough: in the bowl of a stand mixer with the whisk attachment, whisk the egg yolks, whole egg, sugar, butter, and buttermilk. Add approximately 2 cups of the flour along with the yeast and salt; whisk until moistened and combined. Remove the whisk attachment and replace with a dough hook. Add all but 3/4 cup of the remaining flour and knead on low speed for 5 minutes. Check the consistency of the dough, add more flour if necessary; the dough should feel soft and moist but not sticky. Knead on low speed 5 minutes more or until the dough clears the sides of the bowl. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured work surface; knead by hand about 30 seconds. Lightly oil a large bowl. Transfer the dough to the bowl, lightly oil the top of the dough, cover and let double in volume, 2 to 2 1/2 hours.

Combine the brown sugar, cinnamon and salt in a medium bowl. Mix until well incorporated. Set aside until ready to use.

Butter a 9 by 13-inch glass baking dish. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured work surface. Gently shape the dough into a rectangle with the long side nearest you. Roll into an 18 by 12-inch rectangle. Brush the dough with the 3/4-ounce of melted butter, leaving 1/2-inch border along the top edge. Sprinkle the filling mixture over the dough, leaving a 3/4-inch border along the top edge; gently press the filling into the dough. Beginning with the long edge nearest you, roll the dough into a tight cylinder. Firmly pinch the seam to seal and roll the cylinder seam side down. Very gently squeeze the cylinder to create even thickness. Using a serrated knife, slice the cylinder into 1 1/2-inch rolls; yielding 12 rolls. Arrange rolls cut side down in the baking dish; cover tightly with plastic wrap and store in the refrigerator overnight or up to 16 hours.

Remove the rolls from the refrigerator and place in an oven that is turned off. Fill a shallow pan 2/3-full of boiling water and set on the rack below the rolls. Close the oven door and let the rolls rise until they look slightly puffy; approximately 30 minutes. Remove the rolls and the shallow pan of water from the oven.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

When the oven is ready, place the rolls on the middle rack and bake until golden brown, or until the internal temperature reaches 190 degrees F on an instant-read thermometer, approximately 30 minutes.

While the rolls are cooling slightly, make the icing by whisking the cream cheese in the bowl of a stand mixer until creamy. Add the milk and whisk until combined. Sift in the powdered sugar, and whisk until smooth. Spread over the rolls and serve immediately.

2007-10-02T12:41:00.000-07:00

I have never understood olive oil. I use it all the time-- I cook with it, spray my nonstick before I attempt to make a fried egg, and it is the essential ingredient in my favorite pizza dough. But I would hear people go on and on about olive oil and tastings, and the grassiness of this one, and how this one tastes terrible, and it meant nothing to me. It all tasted the same to me. The cincher was when we stumbled on an olive oil tasting and none of them tasted better than the goya I have been known to pick up.

But vinegar, oh, vinegar.
I love you.

It started back in college I believe. The late night cafeteria offered a meager selection of food, and I depended heavily on the sandwich guy. As a vegetarian, I got cheese sandwiches with all the vegetable toppings they could offer, topped with oil and vinegar. One day, I decided that the oil was just reducing the taste of the vinegar so why bother with it. “Just vinegar?” the sandwich guy always repeated back to me. Just vinegar.

Soon this became a way of life to me. Oil and vinegar on my salad? Nope, just a healthy splash of aged balsamic vinegar and I was happy. I would go to an Italian restaurant fairly regularly with a friend, and while we chatted about our lives and tore in to their delicious bread crusted with salt and rosemary, her dipping bowl would contain olive oil and mine would be balsamic. My favorite snack for, um, that time of the month? Salt and vinegar chips (preferable kettle chips, or Dirty Potato Chips brand) and chocolate milk. I heard you gag, but think about it. After a salty, salty snack, you want a piece of chocolate, don’t you? Well, this is everything you crave all in one fantastic snack.

And, the natural progression in a vinegar love affair is pickles. But not cucumbers, or even one of the varieties of vegetables that I adore from Rick’s Picks. I went for grapes.

There was an article on NPR by Orangette about pickling grapes and nothing sounded better to me. I spent a long time trimming those grapes, and when the hot vinegar bath of spices was ready, I poured it over the grapes and let it rest overnight. Day 1, they tasted like plain old grapes and I was slightly disappointed. Day 2, more of the same. Day 3, however, the flavors really started to come out. I could taste the mustard seed and the peppercorns lurking behind the scenes.

The article warned that by day 4, they would likely be too strong, but, oh, day 4, you were the day I was waiting for. The make my mouth pucker, identify all the spices, warm, sour, sweet taste of pickled grapes. Obviously, not everyone has the stomach for the taste of vinegar, and day 1 will be perfect for some. But if you aren’t getting the point of the grapes at first, wait until day 4. You won’t make it to day 5.

Pickled Grapes

From Molly Wizenberg at NPR

Link to Recipe

Makes about 3 cups

1 pound red grapes, preferably seedless
1 cup white wine vinegar
1 cup granulated sugar
1 1/2 teaspoon brown mustard seeds
1 teaspoon whole black peppercorns
1 (2 1/2-inch) cinnamon stick
1/4 teaspoon salt

Rinse and dry the grapes, and pull them carefully from their stems. Using a small knife, trim away the "belly button" at the stem end of the grape, exposing a bit of the flesh inside. Put the grapes into a medium bowl, and set aside.

In a medium saucepan, combine the remaining ingredients. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat; then pour the mixture immediately over the grapes. Stir to combine. Set aside to cool at room temperature.
Pour the grapes and brine into jars with tight-fitting lids (or cover the bowl with plastic wrap), and chill at least 8 hours or overnight. Serve cold.

2007-09-21T10:36:00.000-07:00

Many a food blogger is waxing ecstatic about fall these days and I am no exception. This weather has been fantastic. Today snuck back in to the 80s, and it appears those 80s will be here to stay through the weekend, but these eighty degree days are different. My hair does not frizz, I can comfortably wear jeans, and the air just smells better.

So in honor of fall, we decided to go on a long, cross Manhattan walk, starting in Greenwich Village and winding our way to Tompkins Square Park. We stopped at the greenmarket there and tasted some amazing late season peaches, considered buying prune plums, heirloom tomatoes, or squash, but declined, as we didn’t want to carry it on our continued walk. We finally paused for brunch at Kate’s Joint on Avenue B, and made light of a plate of huevos rancheros and a breakfast burrito, and a few cups of coffee each to fuel us on.

The day came to shape when we stopped at the new! big! Whole Foods on E. Houston Street. Lee marveled at their beer room while I had to be forcibly removed (by Lee) from the cheese cave. After tasting camembert and comte, we decided to buy a less perishable cheese, drunken goat, and Lee picked up Post Road Pumpkin Beer, and we finally got around to trying their ground-in-front-of-you honey roasted peanut butter.

Realizing we were now carrying a lot of stuff, we began heading to the train, cutting down Bleecker so I could pick up espresso at Porto Rico.

Upon arriving back at our apartment, with the temperature clocking in around 67, we declared it a fall day. And what do you do on a fall day? You bake an apple pie.

I had bookmarked a recipe for cinnamon apple crumb pie from the October Bon Appetit, and pulled it out for this pie making event. We snacked on cheese and crackers, and brought the laptop in to the kitchen to play DVDs of Gilmore Girls. The crust came together without a food processor, but with my new handy pasty cutter (I always loved the part in Cooking for Mr. Latte where Amanda Hesser’s grandmother tells her she has cold hands, and calls them “pastry hands.” My hands are like ice—I usually cut the butter in by hand, and have never had a melting problem). The recipe called for a splash of apple cider vinegar to tie it together, and I think it did just that.

The apples were treated to sugar, flour, lemon zest, and a very large amount of cinnamon. After I rolled out the dough, we piled in the apples and baked it for 40 minutes. When the timer went off, the crumb topping was added (another stick of butter!) and it continued to bake until the apples were almost carmelized, bubbling and dripping out of the corners of the pie.

The results were outstanding-- the crust was buttery and crisp at the same time; the crumb topping was, well, eaten off by me before we even cut the first slice. The apples, thinly sliced, soaked up all of the flavors, and the lemon and cinnamon combination made them pop.

Topped with unsweetened whipped cream, with my feet up on a nearby chair, watching the GIlmores... Fall, welcome back.

Cinnamon Apple Crumb Pie

recipe from Bon Appetit, October 2007

link to recipe on epicurious.com

We left the raisins out of ours, but I imagine they would be outstanding.

Crust:

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1 tablespoon sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/8 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 cup (1 stick) chilled unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch cubes

1/4 cup (or more) ice water

1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar

Filling:

1 cup (packed) golden brown sugar

3 tablespoons all purpose flour

2 teaspoons finely grated lemon peel

1 1/4 teaspoons ground cinnamon

2 3/4 pounds G ranny Smith apples (about 6 medium), peeled, halved, cored, cut into 1/8-inch-thick slices (about 8 cups)

1 cup raisins

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Crumb Topping:

1 cup all purpose flour

1/2 cup (packed) golden brown sugar

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/8 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup (1 stick) chilled unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch cubes

Lightly sweetened whipped cream or vanilla ice cream

For crust:Blend flour, sugar, salt, and baking powder in processor. Add butter; pulse until mixture resembles coarse meal. Mix 1/4 cup ice water and vinegar in small bowl; add to processor and pulse until moist clumps form, adding more ice water by teaspoonfuls if mixture is dry. Gather dough into ball; flatten into disk. Wrap in plastic and chill at least 1 hour.

For filling:Position rack in center of oven and preheat to 375°F. Mix brown sugar, flour, lemon peel, and cinnamon in large bowl. Add apple slices, raisins, and vanilla; toss until well coated. Transfer filling to unbaked crust, mounding filling slightly in center. Bake pie until apples begin to soften, about 40 minutes.Meanwhile, prepare crumb topping:Whisk flour, sugar, cinnamon, and salt in small bowl. Add butter and rub in with fingertips until mixture begins to clump together.Sprinkle topping evenly over hot pie. Continue to bake pie until apples are tender and topping is browned and crisp, tenting pie with sheet of foil if browning too quickly, about another 50 minutes. Cool pie on rack at least 2 hours.

2007-09-14T09:19:00.000-07:00

Does anyone else feel the pressure to preserve your summer vegetables? I say “my” summer fruits and vegetables like I grew them. That couldn’t be further from the truth. But they are mine in the sense I bought them, and mine in the sense that I’ve started eating seasonally and as locally as I can, and those tomatoes and hot peppers I currently have in the fridge will be disappearing soon enough. And for that, I cannot let a single one go bad. I cannot, must not, throw away a single thing that is existing in my crisper.

So tomatoes have been made in to sauce and roasted and dried in a 200 degree oven for 6 hours. They have been sliced and diced, salted and grilled, eaten with mozzarella in a salad and with a bowl of Israeli couscous, made in to a quiche for my new mother friend. Peaches have been consumed in tiny wedges (makes breakfast more civilized) and whole, while dripping down my wrist, and baked in to a galette more times than I can admit to my hips. Strawberries have been breakfast many a time, entire pints at a time that usually involve a work email to Lee.

Oh my God, the latest tri star strawberries are the best. I can’t stop eating them.
Stop! I want to try some.
Oh… um…

Pints of raspberries have been picked up to be taking in to the Union Square multiplex while taking in a matinee. Blueberries have been frozen, ready for a years worth of blueberry pancakes. Plums have been consumed as breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and made many an appearance in cake form.

In looking for internet inspiration on what to do with my latest batch of black plums, I found a recipe on Orangette for Black Plum Clafoutis. I had heard of clafoutis before, usually in reference to unpitted cherries, and had heard it was crepe like in texture. Having a bit of a love affair with crepes, I dove right in.

While warm, newly unmolded from my tart pan, it was delicious. A shot of powdered sugar, and I was in heaven. Day two however, the plums had unattractively stained the rest of the cake, and it was a tad too gelatinous for my liking.

Not every recipe I try is a winner, and I love the clafoutis in concept. I think next time I will try a different recipe, but the clafoutis is an amazing way to use up the fruit before it begins its descent in to overripe.

Black Plum Clafoutis
Recipe from Orangette

3 medium black plums, pitted and cut into eight wedges each
3 large eggs
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1 cup whole milk
1 ½ tsp vanilla extract
A pinch of salt
½ cup unbleached, all-purpose flour
Powdered sugar, for serving

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit, and lightly butter a 9-inch dish. I used a tart pan, but I imagine a pie or cake pan would work fine. I just love fluted edges and use the tart pan whenever I can. Arrange the plum wedges, skin side down, in a decorative pattern on the bottom of the dish.

One bowl action, which I love: Whisk the eggs and sugar in a medium bowl until pale yellow, about 1 minute. Add the milk, vanilla, and salt, and whisk to combine.Sprinkle the flour over the batter, and whisk until smooth.

Pour the batter gently over the plums, trying to disturb them as little as possible (some will float and move around no matter how gentle you are). Bake the clafoutis until puffed and nicely golden around the edges, about 45-50 minutes. Remove the clafoutis from the oven, and allow it to cool for a half hour or so, during which time you’ll see it deflate. Serve it warm or at room temperature, dusted with powdered sugar.

2007-07-30T08:45:00.000-07:00

Remember when I loved you summer? Well, you fouled up.

It isn’t even August yet and the traditional urban humidity is coming at me in full force. July is hot, but in a nice way—my hair is straight, my shoulders are tanned and my nose is perpetually sunburnt, and I don’t hesitate to go outside. With August, my hair is in a constant state of curling frizz, my skin is constantly dewey, and I skip my moisturizer in the morning because it is too much to put anything on my face. Yesterday, I didn’t go outside once because I just knew how humid it would be outside. I just knew it by every hair lifting and curling off of my head.

So instead, I baked.

With the peaches I had bought from the greenmarket on Saturday, I pulled down my trusty Baking Illustrated and looked for inspiration. This isn’t the cookbook you want to use when you are craving a dessert and don’t know what to make, but when you have an inkling, or need a recipe, it is an amazing reference. When I needed to make pastry cream, I knew they would provide a tasty, not so fussy take on it. My only complaint is their dependence on tools that I don’t have, and I’m not sure most urban apartment dwellers would have. Yes, I have a food processor, but it is tiny, best used for making bread crumbs and small batches of pesto. I do not have the capability to pull together bread dough in it. No, Baking Illustrated, I don’t actually have a microwave. I know, appalling, but want to know something even more appalling? I don’t want one. The only time I have ever wished for one was a) when my Trader Joe’s four cheese mac and cheese was in the oven and I was impatient, or b) when my cup of coffee was cold, and I didn’t have any more coffee to make another pot.

I decided to make a galette, or the far less French sounding free form tart. The dough varied from the usual pate brisee and included corn meal in the ingredients. People, a secret. I love baking with cornmeal. Pie crusts, cookies, I love it. The texture stays amazingly crisp and crunchy, and it adds a depth of flavor. You don’t taste cornmeal, but you taste a little salty, crispy component you can’t identify, but that makes the dish.

BI instructs that the dough pulls together in seconds with a food processor, and I don’t doubt it, but I used my hands. I cut 7 tablespoons of butter in to the flour, cornmeal, sugar, and salt using my hands that are cold no matter what the season (when Amanda Hesser’s grandmother held her cold hands and told her she had pastry hands in Cooking for Mr. Latte, I smiled knowing that I did too). After the butter had been broken up and distributed through the flour in small, pea size lumps, I added a mixture of 2 tablespoons of sour cream and 2 tablespoons of water and pulled the dough together. After chilling in the fridge for an hour or so, I rolled it out, piled on peaches and plums, measurements be damned, and folded it over the pile. A sprinkling of sugar over the top and in the oven it went.

We don’t have any pictures because we ate it all. I considered striking out that sentence, but yes, we ate an entire fruit galette, 2 people. The crust was delicious. I am considering making that and baking it as a cookie so I could just snack on it whenever I wanted. The peaches leaked out beautifully and sloppily, so we were able to mop up the liquid with the corners of the tart that were lacking in the fruit. Because, you know, we ate it off of the cookie sheet.

Recipe to come…

2007-07-23T10:29:00.000-07:00

Lemon Verbena Gelato

Last year, I decided I was going to grow herbs come hell or high water. I don’t have the best history with growing herbs, or anything really. I planted what I referred to as my Mexican herb garden—chili peppers, cilantro, and purple basil—all from seed. Little green leaves began popping up, and then they all died.

I couldn’t decide if it was due to lack of water, too much sunlight, or lack of love, so I bought a small, 2 dollar plant from my supermarket and took excellent care of it, calling it pretty, watering it faithfully, and keeping it in the sunniest window in the house. It died.

I tried African violets to warm up the living room. Yup, you guessed it. Though that one may have involved the cat.

My first success so far, and I’m not even sure if it can be called a ‘success’ is the plant I keep on my desk at work. I named him Henry, after a character in The Time-Traveler’s Wife, and while he hasn’t exactly thrived, he has definitely survived. A lot. Sometimes he will be full of leaves, green, vibrant, and then sometimes he will turn yellow and all his leaves will fall off and I will be left with a sad brown stem. Yet, he always seems to rally back to life. Last December, I took ten days off for the holiday and forgot to give Henry to a plant-sitter for watering. There wasn’t much left of him when I returned, but I kept watering him anyway. And wouldn’t you know it, he’s come back to life? To this day, he has never looked better (though, sometimes I think the night time cleaning staff waters him. That’s fine. We all need a little help sometimes. And when I run in to them, they almost never give me dirty looks for my accidental neglect. Almost never!).

My second success, however, is my lemon verbena plant. In May, I went to the Union Square Greenmarket and bought lemon thyme, lemon verbena, and dill. The dill died first—my kitchen had too much direct sunlight and the poor little guys just sizzled and crinkled like burnt hair. The lemon thyme went next, I also think too sensitive to the light (but he did hold out for a very long time, and I did manage to use it several times for fish and soup). The lemon verbena, however has thrived. It is huge and has outgrown its small pot, and every time I walk by it, I rub the leaves and smell my fingers for a little homegrown aromatherapy.

Heidi, over at 101 Cookbooks, spoke of a friend bringing lemon verbena frozen yogurt to a party but didn’t offer a recipe. I searched and searched and really didn’t find any guidance on the topic. So I decided to just give it a shot. I followed a basic gelato recipe, adding a handful of lemon verbena leaves to the simmering cream and straining them out before churning. I added a capful of vanilla, poured the chilled mixture in to my ice cream maker and started churning.

Wouldn’t you know it, it turned out delicious? The vanilla stays in the background, and the verbena shines with its earthy, lemon, herbal flavor. It doesn’t overwhelm and I would happily use it in place of regular vanilla ice cream in just about any scenario. And as long as my plant continues to grow (I haven’t named him yet for fear of losing him, but I think I may just yet… you know, to prod him along), I’ll be making this gelato the rest of the summer.

Lemon Verbena Gelato
Adapted from ostaff1 on allrecipes.com

1 ½ c. milk
1 ½ c. heavy cream*
4 egg yolks
½ c. sugar
½ tsp. vanilla
Small handful of lemon verbena leaves

*The original recipe for a basic gelato called for 1 c. heavy cream and 2 c. whole milk. Since all I had was 1%, I went ahead and used the measurements I direct here. It turned out delicious, but please use whatever you prefer, or have on hand.

In a medium saucepan, mix milk, cream, and lemon verbena leaves. Warm until foam forms around the edges. Remove from heat.

While the milk mixture is heating, in a large bowl beat egg yolks and sugar until frothy. When the milk is ready, gently pour it in to the egg yolks, whisking constantly.

Return mixture to saucepan; cook over medium heat, stirring with a wooden spoon until the mixture gels slightly and coats the back of the spoon. If small egg lumps begin to show, remove from heat immediately.

Pour the mixture through a sieve or fine strainer into a bowl and discard the leaves. Cover, and chill for several hours or overnight.

Pour the mixture into an ice cream maker, and freeze according to the manufacturer's instructions. Transfer to a sealed container, and freeze until firm. If the gelato is too firm, place it in the refrigerator until it reaches the desired consistency.

2007-07-02T12:35:00.000-07:00

There’s a banana war that plagues our apartment. For the most part, our fruit needs are compatible. We love ripe, sweet raspberries and will put away a container while trying to decide what to eat for dinner. Blackberries fall to the tart side, but are perfect for sorbet. Neither of us are particularly fond of blueberries, except in muffins and waffles. Apples, clementines, grapes, check, check, check. I’m coming around to appreciating melons, which I had previously deemed too watery and lacking in taste (turns out salt helps).

But there are two fruits we just can’t agree on. The first is cherries. I have an aversion to anything cherry, cherry flavored, cherry scented. I want Nyquil to make grape flavored medicine. I skip the cherry popsicles in the box. And Cheerwine? I had never heard of it until a Southerner entered my life, but it tastes like carbonated robitussin to me (Red Bull, you too). Lee loves cherry—Cheerwine in particular.

[Side story, we were watching an old episode of King of Queens, which is set in Queens, NY and they are in a supermarket, trying to wrap up Thanksgiving shopping. Doug goes to get soda, and the entire wall of soda is Cheerwine. And for most of the episode, he is carrying around a six pack. This bothered us, and amused us, for a few reasons. First off, they don’t sell Cheerwine in NY, much less an entire wall of it. So we assumed they couldn’t get a contract for product placement with Pepsi. Then, we realized they probably don’t sell it in LA, where they film, either. Then the kicker was when Doug comes up to the register with Mickey’s, apparently a very Southern malt liquor. So, someone on that show is from south of Virginia and showed it proudly.]

The second is bananas. We both love them, but Lee needs to eat them while perfectly yellow, not a speck of brown to be seen. I wait until it is about 50% brown speckles. In a sense, we’re compatible—he will eat the bananas early on while I will wait until they are too brown for him and then finish off the bunch. But instead, we battle. He eats as many as he can while they are still yellow and leaves me with one, sad browning banana. So, one day, I hid them in the fridge, thinking they would at least get brown faster than normal, even if they ripened at the same pace, and I would have them all.

Predictably, I forgot about them until they were far beyond the ripe stage. So it was time for banana bread.

I used a recipe from Simply Recipes with a technique from Molly thrown in—demerara sugar sprinkled on top to give it a heavenly sugar topped crust. This bread is a reason to forget about the bananas.

3 or 4 ripe bananas, smashed

1/3 cup melted butter

1 cup sugar (can easily reduce to 3/4 cup)

1 egg, beaten

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 teaspoon baking soda

Pinch of salt

1 1/2 cup of flour

Preheat the oven to 350°F. With a wooden spoon, mix butter into the mashed bananas in a large mixing bowl. Mix in the sugar, egg, and vanilla. Sprinkle the baking soda and salt over the mixture and mix in. Add the flour last, mix. Pour mixture into a buttered 4x8 inch loaf pan. Bake for 1 hour. Cool on a rack. Remove from pan and slice to serve.

2007-07-02T12:33:00.000-07:00

Things I’m loving:

The bean salad at Whole Foods, Union Square. I don’t recognize the beans (like a great Northern on crack), but the salty, heated seasoning causes me to pluck beans from the container with my fingers.

The messages on Dove Bites. The one I just opened said “Don’t think about it so much.” Thanks, Dove. I won't.

Roasting asparagus. No other way to cook it.

Madelines. At a baby shower this weekend, they had a platter of madelines (since the mother to be is naming her daughter such), and the cookie and I were reunited. Now I just need to stop by my mom’s to pick up my pan.

Brooklyn Brewery Summer Ale. We stopped by the brewery in Williamsburg for a drink on a Saturday afternoon, and this is a beer I could really commit to. Too bad I can’t find it anywhere else. Yet.

LifeThyme Market, W. 12th and 6th. Fulfills all of my alternative sweetener and unlikely flour needs.

2007-06-27T07:28:00.001-07:00

Small, bright strawberries that remind you why you hate Driscoll’s strawberries and why you shouldn’t bother eating them until summer calls. A small tub of Vermont Cheese and Butter company goat cheese. Sourdough bread from Bread Alone. A variety of pitted, Greek olives. A portion of bean salad from Whole Foods. Apple Cider Doughnuts. A sea salt caramel candy bar. Union Square. Perfect, 78 degree weather. A visiting friend. A successful shopping mission.

Yup. The day couldn’t have gotten any better.

2007-06-12T07:06:00.000-07:00

Hello, lover.

Summer, I have missed you.

You see, I can deal with winter. I’m not a wimp. I have a heavy coat from J. Crew which seems to battle the wind quite sufficiently. I have snow boots, a variety of scarves, mittens, and hats. I keep a bag of salt in my car, in case of an icy emergency. Wind chill doesn’t keep me down, and I am quite good at scoffing at Lee when he mentions how cold he is when the mercury drops below 40. “This isn’t cold!” I say to my Southern state transplant. “Wait until February.”

But summer, oh summer, I’m happy to see you. I love eating salads and melons and wearing flip flops to work each day. I love the promise of an entire summer schedule of concerts and movies, all outside in parks and on piers. I love hot days and the crack of thunder at night to bring on the breeze. I love walking barefoot on the beach, drinking margaritas and happy hour beers on patios, and waiting outside all morning for tickets to Shakespeare in the Park. I love eating take out in Union Square and, when the heat gets too unbearable, sneaking candy and caramel popcorn in to the movie theater for a frosty couple of hours.

Summer, I heart you.

Sharon’s Sorbet, however, you have competition.

I loved nothing more on a hot day than wandering over to the supermarket and picking up a pint of Sharon’s Mixed Berry Sorbet. By the time I got it home, it would usually be approaching soup consistency, and I would consume it as quickly as I could, taking in the tart and the sweet while sitting in front of my window unit air conditioner. However, with the purchase of my ice cream maker, and some excellent prices on berries, my sorbet is taking over.

The recipe is less of a recipe and more of a guide. We used about 3 cups of berries, a mix of strawberries, raspberries and either blue or blackberries for tartness. Then came the juice of one lemon, and its peel, ¼ cup of water, ¼ cup of white wine, and ½ cup of sugar. We blitzed this in the blender until smooth (it came together in under a minute for us) and strained the mixture to get rid of the seeds (which showed an impressive yield). At this point, you pour the puree in to your ice cream maker and freeze according to manufacturer’s instructions. It froze in much less time than a cream based ice cream.

And, damn, it is good. I will consume this all summer. The texture is softer, due to the wine, and the lemon adds a tartness and freshness that lacks in other store bought sorbets. Sitting in front of Rescue Me DVDs with a Tupperware container of this stuff, while the thunder cracks outside, is my new summer ritual.

Listening to: Rilo Kiley, Take Offs and Landings
A sweeter sound than their later CDs, a little more rock than Jenny's solo work, and an overall lovely background to ice cream making.

2007-05-30T12:42:00.000-07:00

Rancho Gordo=Excelente

I read a beautiful post recently about the desire to return to simpler eating, and it burrowed in to my brain and stayed there. Why should I spend the time on a protein-starch-veggie combo if I don’t feel like it? I’m much happier with an arugula salad, a bowl of grape tomatoes and avocado covered in lime juice, or slices of tomatoes and fresh mozzarella interspersed with homegrown basil (thank you Nana!).

For some time now, I have heard of Rancho Gordo beans (though I believe my first reaction was translating it, and asking, the fat ranch?). This homegrown operation grows heirloom beans, so fresh and young and straight from the source that you can plant a few of their beans and eventually grow your own. This was only a vague story of folklore, though, until one day I stumbled on their site (after a mention in Heidi’s new book) and found the order page.

I ordered five pounds worth: 2 Yellow Indian Mother, 2 Goat’s Eye, and 1 Scarlet Runner bean.

On a ridiculously hot Monday, this past week, with the hours of our long weekend at the beach fading into memory, we decided to cook a pound of goat’s eye beans. The kitchen, with its huge windows, was sucking in the sun and clocked in at 89 degrees, according to the small thermometer we kept there. But we pursued, pulling down the Dutch Oven, dumping in the beans, garlic, and half of a 2 pound Vidalia onion we bought (it was enormous). They simmered “low and slow” for three hours, until not a trace of the onion was still there. We added several tablespoons of the hot sauce we had made, a shot of apple cider vinegar, and a pinch of red pepper flakes, and ladled the beans and the dark red liquid over wild rice.

We carried our bowls outside and sat on our stoop, watching our Dominican neighbor and his entire extended family run around their yard and dance, music blaring. We ate our steaming hot bowls of rice and beans, and drank Yuengling that had resided in the freezer for 10 minutes before drinking.

As we scraped out the bowls, drank, and smiled at the little girls playing tag, Lee turned to me and said, “This is my favorite part of the weekend.”

Pictures from www.ranchogordo.com. Get over there and order some beans!

2007-05-21T11:26:00.000-07:00

Homemade Oreos

With much thanks to Deb at Smitten Kitchen for my new favorite cookie recipe. Mine aren't as pretty as hers, but so, so delicious.

2007-05-21T10:41:00.000-07:00

Having waitressed in “fine dining” for years during college and graduate school, I have since developed an aversion to fancy pants restaurants. Maybe because I know that behind the scenes, that million dollar chef is either not there or smoking a cigarette over your steak. Or maybe because I feel bad for the servers who have to perform a rigid dance around their tables, trying their hardest to maintain professionalism when really they want to joke with you about how ugly the chairs are, but how good the crabmeat is. And while I do want to go to Babbo someday this year, I hold Po, Agave, Kate’s Joint, Perbacco, and Las Ramblas as my class of restaurants. These are the places where the server will gush about the best special, and confide in you that they hate that margarita, and you should instead try this one. These servers wear jeans, and the food is fresh and probably served by a chef that cares about the food more than the cookbook deals. These are the places where, when I found a hair on my shrimp and I politely, discreetly, asked for another dish, he laughed and said, I can’t believe that happened, I’ll be right back.

That laugh may have been a mark of poor service, but for me, it felt like home. I would much rather laugh with my server than be scared of the moment he comes by with the pastry scraper to get rid of my bread crumbs.

One of my absolute favorite places to eat not listed above is Café Asean. An acronym for association of South Eastern Asian Nations, it is a cumbersome title for the homiest, coziest, most delicious place I stumbled upon this year. The small tables are made from cracked wood, the interior is warm both in décor and temperature, and you want to sit there all day and graze on their pea and shrimp dumplings, their salmon with pineapple, their lemongrass snapper, and their curry. Their curry is fantastic. There is nothing like it on a cool, autumn or spring evening, sitting on their back patio with a beer, slurping down spicy red curry with vegetables, tofu, and pumpkin. They provide cucumber slices to cut the heat of the curry, which can be intimidating, but it is a warming heat, not the heat of slapdash curry paste. This is a heat that sneaks up on you and grows in taste. This is a heat you still feel on your lips when you walk out of the door.

I didn’t think I could match the curry at Café Asean, and I didn’t. But when you want a semi-healthy meal, filling, and a way to use up all of the vegetable odds and ends in your crisper, this recipe will serve you well.

The curry paste comes from a jar, and the inclusion of brown sugar and peanut butter makes it about as unauthentic as you can get. But it is delicious. And while I don’t have a handle on the Cafe Asean perfect recipe yet, this one will definitely do in a pinch.

Thai Red Curry with Vegetables and Tofu

This isn’t as time intensive as pot intensive, and when you are an urban apartment dweller without a dishwasher, I feel like I should provide that warning. But it comes together quickly and is worth the extra pots.

1 package extra firm Tofu (we used Trader Joe’s), cubed
1 tsp. red curry paste (Taste of Thai sells a small bottle that will last forever)
2 cans lite coconut milk
1 tsp brown sugar
1 tsp honey
1 tsp peanut butter
1 red pepper, cored, seeded, and diced
1 zucchini, diced
½ c. snow peas
1 ½ c. rice
Sesame seeds, salt, pepper to taste

Cook the rice of your choice through your usual method. While the rice is cooking, sauté the tofu in a non-stick pan until the cubes lose some of the water and begin to brown. This will take a little while, about ten minutes for us.

When the tofu is finished, set aside and in the same non-stick pan, sauté zucchini and red pepper until softened slightly. Toss the snow peas in as well for a few minutes before the other vegetables are finished cooking. Set aside.

In a small sauce pan, combine 1 can of coconut milk, the curry paste, brown sugar, honey, and peanut butter. Let warm and stir frequently to break up the curry paste (The paste stays stuck together unless you break it up with a wooden spoon. And it is no fun to be the one to find the curry paste lump. Seriously). The mixture will be pale red. Taste for heat—this combination will be fairly hot. If it is too hot, add a little more coconut milk from the second can until you had reached your desired heat.

Pour curry sauce over the vegetables in the saucepan, and add the tofu. Toss everything together.

To serve, place rice on plate and pour sauce and vegetables over. Add sesame seeds, salt, and pepper to taste, and a squeeze of lime can also make a good addition.

Serves 4, or 2 with exciting lunches for the next day.

2007-04-09T13:13:00.000-07:00

I’m not a stingy person by nature—in fact, I may have an uncontrollable spending problem, come to think of it. I adore clothes, kitchen tools, any item I stumble upon at Target that catches my fancy, the boutique Darling on Horatio Street, ballerina flats, jackets from J. Crew, citrus scented candles, and fancy new cheeses from Murray’s. If an item is on sale, I’m drawn to it like a magnet. Never mind that I’m still spending 20 dollars on a shirt, it was marked down! From 90 dollars! Another item that always gets me—limited time only! What, Andrea is going to stop making her jewelry while she has a baby? I better help my collection grow ASAP.

However, I struggle to spend money on mundane, everyday things. My paper towels are always Target brand, my butter is bought in bulk from BJs (I know), and I prefer buying wine from Trader Joe’s. I hate paying for parking anywhere I go and will try to avoid it at all costs, I lug my laundry to my family’s house when I see them to avoid paying the lovely people at Lucky Laundromat, and I hate, hate paying for snacks at the movies. Sure, if I’m in a mall multiplex, I’ll run to the ubiquitous mall drug store (we have a CVS) and buy a diet coke and some snacks to put in my handbag and sneak in to the theater (though, once I walked in holding a cup of coffee, procedure be damned, and no one said a word). Once, while going to see a kid’s movie at 11 am at the horrifically large and crowded Union Square theater, we snuck in Murray’s bagels and coffee. It was an excellent morning, but it still didn’t top the macaroon movie viewing experience:

We were going to see Stranger than Fiction at our local mall theater and the day before, I had made these ganache covered beauties. They were crisp on the edges and hugged with dark chocolate that seemed to be instantly melty as soon as one was pulled off of the parchment for snacking. When we woke up the next day and decided to see an early movie (a hold over from our time in Brooklyn where the first movie of the day, usually the 11 am, was matinee priced), I packed up a Tupperware container of macaroons and we nibbled our way through the latest Will Ferrell movie. Since a large portion of the movie takes place in a bakery (he brought her flours. How adorable was that?), we knew we had the perfect snack, and that the popcorn snacking neighbors would be jealous, if only they could see what we were plucking out of that container.

Chocolate Covered Coconut Macaroons
Adapted from Orangette

3 cups sweetened shredded coconut (Baker's works fine)
¾ cup granulated sugar
¾ cup egg whites
1 ½ tsp pure vanilla extract
¼ tsp almond extract
8 ounces bittersweet or semisweet chocolate, finely chopped
3/4 cup heavy cream

Place the coconut, sugar, and egg whites in a large, heavy saucepan, and combine well. Cook over medium-low heat, stirring regularly, until the mixture is pasty but not dry. This took about 8 minutes for me.

Remove from heat and mix in vanilla and almond extracts. Spread out the coconut mixture on a large baking sheet and refrigerate until cold, about 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 300 degrees Fahrenheit. Line another baking sheet with parchment paper. Molly recommends using a 1/4 cup measuring cup to create your macaroon domes, but I used my hands to roll in to small balls and then flatter the bottoms on the baking sheet.

Bake the macaroons until golden, about 30 minutes. Let cool.

Place the chopped chocolate in a medium bowl. Heat the heavy cream in a small saucepan until it is very hot but not boiling. Remove from the heat, and pour it over the chocolate. Stir until the mixture is smooth and the chocolate is melted. Spoon the glaze over the macaroons, covering them almost completely.

Refrigerate the macaroons until set, at least 2 hours. Transfer the macaroons to an airtight container, and refrigerate or freeze.

2007-04-04T06:35:00.000-07:00

Most of my life, I was a very dutiful breakfast eater. Strangely, this breakfast eating coincided with a very intense commitment to television as well. I went to a small elementary school, and our school day didn’t begin until 8:30. Considering I lived half a block away and could walk there in under three minutes, I should have been getting up at 7:45 to get ready. Nope. I woke up each day at 7:00, made myself two eggo waffles, and rewound the tape that was set to daily record Swan’s Crossing at it’s new, pre-cancellation time of 5:30 am.

There are very few people in the world who can empathize with my devotion to the SC. This is a show that launched a young Sarah Michelle Gellar in to vampire slaying fame. And Brittany Daniel into … well, Sweet Valley High and Dawson’s Creek. The plots were absolutely outrageous, but for a preteen with a soft spot for PG romance, nothing beat Jimmy and Callie, and the kid from Airborne’s sister and her boyfriend (it has been a while). I would sit on the couch with my plastic, faux wood tray and my waffles, and start my mornings out right!

Breakfasts to come after that never really matched up. High school was a flurry of Nutri-grain bars and Carnation Instant Breakfast (they never did sell mocha in its own package, you always had to buy the multipack). Even now, my breakfast is always eaten at my desk and usually comes in the form of an instant package of oatmeal or a yogurt (however, with the introduction of Liberte to my mornings, things have definitely perked up). Now, the only time breakfast stands up to the breakfasts of my past is on the weekends, and on the days we lounge in our pajamas and make this:

This apple pancake, courtesy of Luisa and one of her Wednesday food sections, is not terribly photogenic, but it is the most phenomenal breakfast. Three apples are sautéed in butter and covered in a cinnamon flavored batter and then baked. I have no doubt that this is doubly excellent in a cast iron skillet, where the top can rise up and turn in to crispy corners, but necessity is the mother of invention, and it is just as delicious in my dutch oven. My one qualm is the note that it serves six. Maybe I shouldn’t admit this, but we finish it each morning. We’re good eaters.

Baked Apple Pancake
Serves 6 (or 2 very hungry people)

5 tablespoons butter, melted, divided
3 eggs, lightly beaten
3/4 cup milk
1 tablespoon granulated sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon flour
2 small apples, peeled, cored and thinly sliced
3 tablespoons brown sugar, lightly packed
3 tablespoons powdered sugar

1. Heat the oven to 450°. Combine 2 tablespoons of melted butter with the eggs, milk, granulated sugar, vanilla, cinnamon, salt and flour. Mix the batter by hand or in a food processor. Set aside.
2. Heat the remaining 3 tablespoons of butter with the apple slices in a 10-inch oven-proof skillet until the apples are sizzling and slightly cooked. Pour in the batter. Sprinkle the top with brown sugar and bake until well browned and puffed, 20 to 25 minutes.
3. Dust with powdered sugar. Cut into wedges and serve immediately.

2007-02-28T13:29:00.000-08:00

I have trouble buying fresh herbs for recipes. I know, it should be my go to option. I should shun any recipe that says dried is fine. But fresh herbs are expensive. And they run out so fast. And, and…

I’ll shut up now. This isn’t about my problem with buying fresh ingredients. This is about how to use up all of that fresh rosemary you bought.

Over Christmas, I had a girls night out dinner with some friends at the Batali-Bastianich love child, Lupa. I loved my meal. The carafino of wine, the bucatini cacao e pepe, the tartufo. After the holidays, I made an effort to make reservations for just Lee and I, and I snagged those for early February. Not wanting to order the same pasta again (but sooo wanting to order it), I ordered a pasta with cauliflower ragu. This was an interesting choice for me since cauliflower is not my favorite vegetable by any means, but the dish had been recommended by chowhounders as the go-to dish, and I imagined it couldn’t be bad at all.

It was delicious. The cauliflower was sautéed with pecorino romano cheese, butter, olive oil, a pinch of red pepper flakes, and fresh rosemary. The sauce rested lightly on the pasta and the cauliflower, with its delicate bite, was as good as cauliflower can ever be. So for Valentines Day, I was going to recreate this meal, and I bought everything I was missing, a head of cauliflower with light green leaves, a spiral pasta with ridges to hold the sauce, and fresh rosemary.

I wound up using one sprig.

So I began googling. The most frequently suggested use for rosemary is to roast it with potatoes, which I agree is delicious, but uses up far less rosemary than I would like. When I tried Chowhound, I found my answer. Homemade crackers.

Since I recently began making my own hummus on a regular basis, I have been going through my preferred cracker like wildfire. Yet, I never even once thought of making my own crackers and I’m so glad I tried it. The dough, if you will, came together in no time and while I had more than a few moments of disbelief that the dough would extend to the far reaches of my cookie sheet, it surprised me and eventually did just that. They turned golden brown in the oven, and while next time I plan on cutting them larger, they were the perfect accompaniment to my hummus, and the perfect use for my rosemary.

Rosemary Crackers

Adapted from Krissywats recipe on Chowhound.com

2 Cups flour

1 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. salt

2/3 Cup warm water

1/3 cup vegetable oil

Preheat to 400.

Lightly grease two large cookie sheets (I used butter, but I can't imagine baking spray would be a problem). Combine flour, baking powder and salt. Stir in water, oil and mix until a smooth dough forms.

Halve dough and flatten each half to edges on each cookie sheet. You will get to a point where it only covers half of the sheet and you are convinced you will never reach the edges. You will. Continue to gently push the dough with your fingers from the center out until you accomplish this. There will be small holes that will fill in during baking.

Cut them on the sheet before baking (I used a pizza cutter).

To add toppings, mix one egg white and 2 Tbs of water to create an egg wash. Brush this over the crackers and add your chopped rosemary. You can also add anything you like-- sesame seeds, salt, poppy seeds, cayenne, whatever you usually like on a cracker.

Yield: depends on how you cut the crackers, but mine filled up the 16 ounce container you see in the pictures.

2007-02-27T10:45:00.000-08:00

There are currently 395 photos tagged on flickr with the phrase ‘no knead’ and I’m sure countless others that call on Jim Lahey, Mark Bittman, dutch oven, and easy to describe their bread. My point is, I doubt there is anything new I can add to the subject other than the story of my dutch oven.

My own adventure in bread baking began when I, like countless others, read the No Knead Bread article in the NY Times. All I needed was a dutch oven, I thought, and I was pumped. I was finally going to buy one of those colorful Le Creuset pots I admired in Williams Sonoma. Small apartment with no storage be damned! I logged on to williamssonoma.com to pick out my color and then realized that I had never actually looked at the price, and good God, is that plated in gold? I closed my browser window and continued with my homemade bread-less life.

I had heard rumors of a 40 dollar dutch oven that almost beat out Le Creuset in Cooks Illustrated, but when I tried to find it at Target, I couldn’t (though, strangely, there were two at Target last night. If you are in the New York metropolitan area and are holding out for the Chefmate Dutch Oven, get ye to Jersey City). Then the holidays came, and I forgot about my dutch oven fund, as all money went towards buying gifts for my Brady-esque army of a family. While sitting at the breakfast bar at Lee’s parents house in North Carolina, his mother and I began randomly chatting about dutch ovens.

“It just feels silly to buy one considering I don’t eat meat and all I want it for is to make bread.”
“I even eat meat and the only thing I want it for is bread baking!”

Fast forward to January. I’m cruising Apartment Therapy: The Kitchen when I spot a post about a sale at Amazon.com on Staub Cocottes. Staub! I had completely forgot about them. I rocketed over to amazon and dropped 99.00 and zero shipping on a green, 4.5 quart Cocotte. I emailed Lee’s mom. She bought the cocotte, and the roasting pan, in red.

And then it arrived. And then I bought a makeshift shelf so I had somewhere to put it.

The bread was delicious. I have upped the salt to a rounded tablespoon, as I like salt, and I have experimented with whole wheat flour to rave reviews. But more than the bread, the oven has emerged as my favorite piece of cookware. I love that nothing sticks to it. I love sautéing cauliflower in preparation for mashing it and not losing any moisture. I love that it has doubled as a cast iron skillet in certain cases, allowing me to try the apple dutch baby. And I love that when I use it, I feel like a cook. And that was worth the 99 dollars.

No Knead Bread

Adapted from Jim Lahey, Sullivan Street BakeryTime: About 1½ hours plus 14 to 20 hours’ rising

3 cups all-purpose or bread flour, more for dusting

¼ teaspoon instant yeast

1¼ teaspoons salt

Cornmeal or wheat bran as needed.

1. In a large bowl combine flour, yeast and salt. Add 1 5/8 cups water, and stir until blended; dough will be shaggy and sticky. Cover bowl with plastic wrap. Let dough rest at least 12 hours, preferably about 18, at warm room temperature, about 70 degrees.

2. Dough is ready when its surface is dotted with bubbles. Lightly flour a work surface and place dough on it; sprinkle it with a little more flour and fold it over on itself once or twice. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rest about 15 minutes.

3. Using just enough flour to keep dough from sticking to work surface or to your fingers, gently and quickly shape dough into a ball. Generously coat a cotton towel (not terry cloth) with flour, wheat bran or cornmeal; put dough seam side down on towel and dust with more flour, bran or cornmeal. Cover with another cotton towel and let rise for about 2 hours. When it is ready, dough will be more than double in size and will not readily spring back when poked with a finger.

4. At least a half-hour before dough is ready, heat oven to 450 degrees. Put a 6- to 8-quart heavy covered pot (cast iron, enamel, Pyrex or ceramic) in oven as it heats. When dough is ready, carefully remove pot from oven. Slide your hand under towel and turn dough over into pot, seam side up; it may look like a mess, but that is O.K. Shake pan once or twice if dough is unevenly distributed; it will straighten out as it bakes. Cover with lid and bake 30 minutes, then remove lid and bake another 15 to 30 minutes, until loaf is beautifully browned. Cool on a rack.

Yield: One 1½-pound loaf.

2007-02-09T13:34:00.001-08:00

The Office Lunch

My perfect meal has always involved a carb, cheese, and soup. There have been variations, but ideally, every meal would involve this combination. Throughout college, I managed to eat this almost every day of the week at my job at my grandmother's cafe-- whatever soup she had that day, a sandwich with muenster and avocado, and a peach snapple, followed up with a cup of coffee, in a styrofoam cup to keep it warm for those stolen sips throughout the lunch rush.

Now, working in an office, I don't have a soup of the day to pluck from, but I still make the effort to cook up big pots of soup on the weekends, and pack my tupperware container each morning. This isn't a perfect system-- this week, I also found myself eating Lean Cuisine, and a slice of Sicilian pizza from our local pizza joint. But when I have my choice...

When Molly posted this soup from Gourmet, I knew I was going to have to make it during the week, rather than waiting for a lazy, Sunday soup making venture. So I stopped at the local grocery store to pick up annatto seeds (Molly warned they may be hard to find, but living in a neighborhood that used to be primarily Dominican has many, many benefits, one of which was having three kinds of annatto seeds, annatto powder, and annatto paste all sitting in the spice section). I peeled potatos until my hands were numb (they were cold from the fridge!). I transferred the whole pot in to my blender because I don't have an immersion blender (I know) and I couldn't find my potato masher. But then I ate it. And ate it. And while we were sitting on the couch, waiting for Lost to begin and having a dessert of mini-three musketeers bars, I knew that I would have a fabulous lunch for the rest of the week.

For recipe, please see Orangette-- I followed it pretty exactly. My only advice would be, if you do like I did and ladle your soup in to a blender to zip, be sure to only fill it halfway. Hot liquids expand and burn when they spill over!

2007-02-03T10:40:00.001-08:00

Rustic Tomato Tart

Accompanied by Rilo Kiley, "Portion for Foxes"

I have broken a cardinal rule of cooking-- I made a tomato themed meal in January. Anyone who has eaten a tomato in the summer knows that all other tomatoes pale in the face of that ruby deliciousness. The winter tomatoes come from parts unknown, lack any real color other than a pale redness, and they require work. They are gritty and tough and should be avoided all winter.

I became aware of my summer tomato obsession only recently, when my grandfather handed me a brown paper bag of tomatoes he had grown in his garden. I ate them sliced with his basil leaves and a sprinkling of parmesan. I ate BLTs and grilled cheese sandwiches with avocados tucked among the tomatoes. And when that first anemic tomato showed up on the shelves of my grocery story, it was like a taste bud died.

Until a New York Times article appeared about Ugly Ripes. A cross between an heirloom and something, this tomato, until recently, was only known to Floridians, but thanks to a court ruling, they were now winging their way to my local Shop-Rite. A few days later, I noticed their sticker and bought about a pound.

What would I do with them though? Flipping through the Once Upon a Tart cookbook, I spotted the recipe for the rustic tomato tart. They focused on how fantastic the tart was in the summer, but suggested using roma tomatoes for the winter version. I decided this would be the vehicle for my Ugly friends.

The tart was almost like an extra rich, mustardy pizza. The herbes de provence, the mustard, and the cheese all added up in to a mustardy, rich cross between a pizza and a quiche. The crust was flaky and sharp, and the Ugly Ripes, roasted and browned, shone. I will not deny that this will be nothing short of amazing in the summer, when I receive my brown bag of tomatoes from my grandfather's garden, but until then, this tart and Ugly Ripe tomatoes will fill in.

Rustic Tomato Tart

Modified from Once Upon a Tart...

Tart crust, to cover a 9 inch tart pan

1 lb of tomatoes, sliced

8 ounce of swiss cheese or gruyere, grated

1 T. dijon mustard

1 t. herbes de provence

2 eggs

1/2 C. heavy cream or half and half

Par bake your tart crust by poking holes in the bottom and baking at 350 for ten minutes. If you have pie weights, place them on top of a piece of parchment or foil in your tart while you bake.

While your tart shell is baking, slice your tomatoes and leave them in a colander for ten minutes to drain. When your tart shell is finished baking, spread the tablespoon of mustard over the shell. Add your grated cheese, adding more or less based on your preference. Sprinkle with herbes de provence. Lay the tomatoes over the cheese, starting from the outside, working your way in. Take care to cover the edges of the tart dough.

In a small bowl, mix two eggs and the cream, along with half a teaspoon of salt and pepper. This will act as your custard and bind your tart together. Pour this mixture over the tart and bake for about an hour, or until the tart does not shake when jiggled.

2007-01-21T11:36:00.001-08:00

Chocolate pot de creme

The internal struggle, aka, Chocolate Pots de Creme.

Accompanied by Belle and Sebastion, Sukie in the Graveyard, from The Life Pursuit.

Recipes always urge you to use good chocolate, and, unless you are making truffles, or something where chocolate is the only ingredient, I don't buy it. I'm not using Baker's squares or anything grainy and stale like that, but my publishing job doesn't pay for Valrhona every time. Sometimes, it pays for the Nestle Chocolatier 60%, which has become my fall back chocolate. I would eat it alone, I'm not embarrassed to add it to recipes, and honestly, it is good. I'm just embarrassed to admit all of that to a baking-loving public.

And then I noticed the chocolate at Trader Joe's.

Sitting above the frozen food aisle, among my favorite treat in the world, dark chocolate covered pretzels, I found the hunks of Ghirardelli, obviously hacked off of a ten pound brick, selling for about three dollars a pound. I chose my hunk (it had the corner of the eagle on it) and then it sat on my shelf for three days. This wasn't chocolate I was going to use for just anything. This had to be used for something that screamed good chocolate.

So, chocolate pots de creme it was. I melted chocolate, simmered heavy cream, and baked them in a water bath (though, lacking in enough ramekins, I baked them in our small ikea bowls). The taste was outstanding-- somewhere between a mousse, a pudding, a chocolate bar, and icing, it was terribly rich and dangerously delicious. They don't look like much, but the richness makes for a perfect dinner party ending, or accompaniment to a Veronica Mars episode you had missed the first time around.

I have to be honest with you reader-- I had to throw away the last one. The need to eat these was growing dangerous, and our restraint was rapidly disappearing. The return to low-fat yogurt was calling us.

I was never a Belle and Sebastian fan, but I picked up their last CD recently during Virgin's ten dollar sale after hearing a song on Sweet Juniper. "Sukie in the Graveyard" isn't the best song on the album, nor does it win the award for song that gets stuck in my head the most (that goes to "The Blues are Still Blue.") But it doesn't have the best lyric-- "she had an A-One body and a face to match, she didn't have money, she didn't have class." Listen to the song once, and see how many hours it takes until you find yourself telling someone, sarcastically or seriously, that they have an a-one body and a face to match. It took me about an hour.

Recipe from the Balthazar Cookbook by way of Grant at Well Fed

1 1/2 cups heavy cream

1 cup whole milk

1/2 cup sugar

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

8 ounces semisweet chocolate (I used Ghirardelli)

6 large egg yolks

Preheat oven to 250 degrees F. Move a rack to the center of your oven.

Coursely chop your chocolate; set aside.
In a medium saucepan, combine the cream, milk, sugar and vanilla. Whisk to combine and bring to a boil over a medium heat. Add the chopped chocolate and whisk until melted. Remove from heat.
In a medium bowl, lightly beat the eggs yolks. In a slow steady stream, add the chocolate-cream mixture, whisking until smooth. Divide the mixture among 6 ramekins (or 4 oven safe ikea bowls) and place them in a large casserole or high-sided baking dish.

Make a water bath by pouring cold water into the casserole so that it comes halfway up the sides of the ramekins or bowls. Cover tightly with foil and bake on the center rack for 1 hour and 15 minutes. The custards shouls jiggle slightly in the center when finished.

Top with homemade whipped cream if you really want to rock your world.

2007-01-19T13:12:00.001-08:00

Lemon Curd
.

When I was in graduate school, I took a class on post-colonial literature with the most fabulous professor. She was likely approaching her 60th birthday, with perfectly done hair, polished clothing, and the most proper British accent. She had gone to Columbia for her Ph.D. and loved to tell stories about her graduate school professors, often laughing before the punchline, and sometimes laughing well before the story had begun. She also had a story about meeting President George W. Bush and winding up on the evening news being shown with him, but that story can only be delivered by her. It would lose something without her laughter laced throughout the story.

At the end of a long semester of Zadie Smith, Salman Rushdie, Caryl Phillips, and others, she suggested having a post-colonial themed party for our last class. Everyone was to bring a food that was from a country we read from. My classmates offered to bring Darjeeling tea, scones, and jerk pork, among other things, and one man in my class heard the offer of scones and said he would bring lemon curd to accompany them.

I had made it 22 years without lemon curd, and it was a purely arbitrary decision based on the word ‘curd.’ Curd meant curdled, in my opinion, and curdled reminded me of that ill-fated moment when, forgetting that I had made lemon tea, not black tea, I poured a healthy splash of half and half and watched the cream crumple up and float to the top of my cup. The lemon curd in my class, however, was tart and sweet and custard like, and reminded me of desserts and thumbprint cookies. I studied the jar of pre-packaged lemon curd he had brought and swore that, like the Whole Kids Mixed Berry Jam and popover recipe that dominated my weekend mornings, this lemon curd would find a place in that pairing.

And, embarrassingly, 5 years later it did.

I had been on a chocolate binge, what will surely later be known as the chocolate month of 2006. And when I am overdosing on sweets, my body begins craving two things—spicy and tart (not together). I begin eating fish tacos with a fierce verde sauce, and pasta arrabiatta or spicy puttanesca. I considered making lemon cookies (okay, I made them also), but then decided the try my hand at the lemon curd I had loved so much five years earlier. I squeezed lemons for their juice, and grated zest over a sliver of parchment paper. I separated eggs and I stirred and stirred until it thickened and then chilled it in the refrigerator in a cleaned out jam jar. It made its debut over German Pancakes a la Deb, and it was exactly as I remembered it—tart and sweet and the perfect palate cleanser post-chocolate 2006 binge.

If only my professor knew how much else she had exposed me to beyond post-colonial lit.

Lemon Curd
From the JoyofBaking.com

While this isn't a difficult recipe by any means, it does require a lot of attention. Make sure you have all of your ingredients ready and you don't need to interrupt your flow to zest a lemon or pour sugar. It is not a lengthy process-- from prepping ingredients to pouring the curd in to a container, you will be finished in fifteen to twenty minutes.

3 large eggs
1/3 cup (80 ml) fresh lemon juice (2-3 lemons) (do not use the bottled lemon juice)
1 tablespoon (4 grams) finely shredded lemon zest
3/4 cup (150 grams) granulated white sugar
4 tablespoons (56 grams) unsalted butter, at room temperature and cut into small pieces

In a stainless steel bowl placed over a saucepan of simmering water, whisk together the eggs, sugar, and lemon juice until blended. Cook, stirring constantly (to prevent it from curdling), until the mixture becomes thick (like sour cream or a hollandaise sauce). This will take approximately 10 minutes. Remove from heat and immediately pour through a fine strainer to remove any lumps. Cut the butter into small pieces and whisk into the mixture until the butter has melted. Add the lemon zest and let cool. The lemon curd will continue to thicken as it cools. Cover immediately (so a skin doesn't form) and refrigerate for up to two weeks.

Makes 1 1/2 cups.

2006-12-16T09:40:00.000-08:00

There are some things I struggle with doing until the weather gets cold. I can’t put my favorite afghan on the couch for easy access when the average December temperature is hovering near 60. I can’t drink hot chocolate with the can of whipped cream nearby when I find myself pulling my hair off of my neck to cool down. And, the worst of all, I am struggling to shop for Christmas presents when I don’t need to wear a coat.

But, recently added to that list is, I can’t go back to Piadina until it is cold.

We had one of those Saturday nights that took a turn of plans. We headed to Union Square to see the new James Bond movie, forgoing our local theater for the bigger screen, but when we got there (after a detour at Whole Foods for some movie snacks of honey roasted peanuts and cookies*), we discovered it was sold out. Sigh. None of the other movies really
leapt out at us, so we hopefully walked over to 19th Street thinking that theater would have something desirable. No such luck. So, thinking we were just heading home, we stopped at Trader Joe’s for 2 bottles of Beaujolais, as it was the season, but then thought, hell, let’s get dinner. After eliminating several Pan Asian options that were staring at us in Union Square, we remembered that Piadina had sounded tempting and walked over to W. 10th Street.

Piadina is in the middle of rows of brownstones, and as you are approaching it from 5th
Avenue, you feel quite confident you are on the wrong block. But eventually, as you work your way towards 6th, the sign appears and the basement restaurant is made known to you. Does anyone else adore the basement restaurant? It just seems extra cozy, and tucked away. You can watch people walk by, but they aren’t staring in at your meal. One of my favorite meals of all time was in late fall at Caravan of Dreams—we snagged one of the outdoor tables, sunken a few feet from the sidewalk, drank organic wine and ate hummus and just soaked in those last warm days. But I digress in my memories…the space was beautiful. The room was long and narrow, warm and dark, and the lights were just enough to make everything look hazy and beautiful. The music was soft in the background, and I could have sat in that room with a bottle of wine for hours.

We were seated near the front of the restaurant and given bread and oil. The menu was simp
le, and the specials included a risotto of the day. We decided to split two dishes, a spinach piadina and the rigatoni with ricotta salata and eggplant. The rigatoni was good, solid, but not something I would run back to have. The sauce was the proper level of sweetness and tart, the eggplant was cooked well, not full of oil, and the pasta was cooked al dente. It just didn’t stun me like other, even simpler, pastas have.

The piadina was good, but not what we were expecting. For major holidays and special Tuesdays, as the case may be, my grandfather makes stuffed breads, full of prosciutto, salami, cheeses, olives, artichokes, roasted peppers—it is an antipasti platter in a bread. I think when I ordered a piadina, that was what I had in mind, but what I received was a flatbread filled with spinach that almost resembled a tortilla. Once I got over my bias, I enjoyed it—the spinach was oily, but garlicky, and dipping it in my pasta sauce definitely livened it up.

It seems silly to think, well, the food was just okay, but I can’t wait to go back, but I can’t. The space was so perfect for visiting with a friend, or putting on your snow boots to venture out for, that I look forward to going back. I’m not sure the winter I was promised will be coming, but eventually, when that temperature drops again, you’ll be able to find me on W. 10th.

*Best movie snack combo in the world is corn nuts and dried strawberries. Mock until you try it, then you will be praising me as a genius. A freaking genius.

2006-12-01T12:25:00.000-08:00

Summer in December

Tomato Feta Salad

It is December 1st, and it is 72 degrees, or as the weathermen and women keep telling me, a record breaking 72 degrees. I keep looking at the soups stocked up in the freezer and thinking how much I want one, and then having to neglect them in favor of something cold, something fresh.

It isn't exactly salad season in December-- nothing salad related is really in season, you can't pick up ripe, Jersey tomatoes at the farmer's market, or fresh greens. At this time of the year, salads come in a bag, the ingredients are inferior, and salads shouldn't be the main course but something that comes while you wait for your hearty soup, pasta, steak dinners in your favorite restaurant. But this unseasonably warm weather made two of my favorite salads make an appearance, salads that aren't as dependent upon seasonal ingredients.

The first brings with it some good memories. Before we became a couple, Lee and I worked together. And, as part of that flirtatious pre-courtship, we tried to impress each other with our recommendations. He was forced to watch the first season of 24; I had to watch the first season of The West Wing. He worked his way through White Teeth and The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay; I watched yet another season of The West Wing (it really is as addictive as I had heard). But then the food came out-- for my first tupperware gift, I made vichyssoise, rich, cold, velvety potato soup. He countered with three items in rapid succession: blue cheese mac n' cheese, cold soba noodles after he heard how much I loved them at Dojo, and, the item that became my own, a lime-tomato-avocado-feta salad. There was no lettuce, no dressing, just diced up ingredients with the tartness of lime and the saltiness of feta to tie it all together.

Mango Avocad0 Salad

The second includes seasonal ingredients in some part of the world, but not my corner of the northeast seaboard. As much as I admire the notion of eating locally, especially in the summer with all of the extra variety, I could never eat completely locally. I would need my avocados and my mangos. I first had this salad at the restaurant I spent the better part of 5 years working at, and there, strangely enough, I had it topped with basil vinaigrette. There is nothing in the dressing that seems like it would go with avocados and mangoes, but it works. When I recreated it at home, I used romaine hearts and Trader Joe's brand balsamic vinaigrette and it was just as delicious.

I think beginning tomorrow I will be able to start eating the soups in the freezer, but for now, one last salad day before the year ends is all this girl needed.

Tomato-Lime Salad

1 pint grape tomatoes, sliced in half

1 avocado, peeled, cored, and sliced in to small, half inch pieces

2 limes

feta (half cup)

Mix ingredients in bowl and squeeze juice of one and a half limes over. I prefer the salad extra tart, so I usually add that last half a lime to the salad. I'll leave that up to you, however.

Mango-Avocado Salad

1 avocado, peeled and sliced

1 mango, peeled and sliced

1 head of romaine, outer leaves removed and trimmed

Vinaigrette (homemade or other)

Assemble ingredients and top with dressing. And consume quickly!

2006-11-28T13:14:00.000-08:00

I’m going to make a claim that is absolutely preposterous. I know it is. But here we go anyway: the best bagels I have ever had could be found in Jersey City, NJ. I know. I know that just across that river is the home to the best bagels in the world (and pizza… and beer… that New York City tap water), and I will not contest that claim. I’m just saying that the best bagels were in Jersey City.

The sad part of that story is that they used to be found in Jersey City. The bagel place didn’t really have a name—there was a neon sign in the window that said bagel factory, but I’m not sure if that was their name or just their purpose. They stood at the corner of Columbus and Jersey and was one of the first places I ever tried when I moved to JC. The rest of the city seemed split on them—some didn’t like their dirty floor (but if you witnessed the foot traffic, you knew it was unavoidable). Some didn’t like their bagels. They were obviously insane.

The bagels weren’t too puffy, weren’t too bready, had a hard bottom crunch, and were doughy in the center. They were frequently warm, and Lee would save the bottom half for last and eat it like a crunchy pretzel. The everything bagel was covered in it's everything glory, with tons of salt. The coffee there was standard deli brew, and I respect that more than a flavored coffee list, but in the summer, the iced coffee was made with coffee ice cubes so the ice wouldn’t dilute your drink. Egg and cheese on an everything bagel, an iced coffee, and one of those sidewalk tables in the shade of one of the few trees in Jersey City? The perfect Sunday morning (especially when followed up with another iced coffee from Legal Grounds, but another day for that).

Then I walked by and saw a sign go up. “Another World Bagels, coming soon!” What the hell? When Lee came back from picking up the bagels from Another World, the verdict wasn’t good.

“I have bad news,” he said, putting down the bagel bag. “The first thing I saw when I walked in was a sign that said ‘try one of our varieties of flavored coffee.’”

Uh oh. Then we opened the Styrofoam boxes. The bagels were huge. Puffy. Doughy. And had very little everything on that.
Taste wise? Like eating a chunk of white bread that someone had accidentally dropped some poppy seeds on.
Carly? Wanted to cry.

I never even had a chance to have a last bagel from the possible bagel factory.

So, on Sunday we had plans to do a big Manhattan walk. We were feeling fat from Thanksgiving, and Grimaldi’s, and we decided to take the 2/3 up to 96th Street and walk down Broadway to 33rd where we would catch the PATH train home. But breakfast…

“Know what’s near the 14th Street Station?” I offered. “Murray’s Bagels.”

We were both so starved for a decent bagel that we didn’t even think of any alternatives and we headed right to Murray’s. I ordered an everything with cream cheese while Lee had an everything with lox spread. The verdict: awesome. How did it compare to Jersey City? Close, but not quite. Murray’s had the crunch on the bottom, and the doughy center, but no salt on the everything. If they had piled on the salt, it would have definitely been up there, but for now, JC still holds the crown. For bagels I can actually buy now, however, Murray’s wins.

2006-11-27T11:26:00.000-08:00

Our Day in DUMBO

I have a love/ hate relationship with DUMBO. It is easy to get to, has beautiful views, one of my favorite parks in all of New York, brick and/or cobbled streets, a wine store that usually has tastings, and the ability to stand under two of the most intimidating structures in the country--The Brooklyn and Manhattan bridge. But, on the other hand, all of those new, shiny condominiums block the sunlight in most of the neighborhood, and it feels isolated. Sure there are pockets of people here or there, but as a whole, I feel like the only person in the neighborhood. If anyone agrees with me about that, please let me know.

This weekend, however, came time to visit DUMBO. I wanted to buy Lee’s parents some of Jacques Torres Wicked hot chocolate, but the shipping was preposterous. So, our day was born. We would head to Grimaldi’s for pizza first, then wander over to Water Street to pick up the hot chocolate.

I had never been to Grimaldi’s but knew what to expect. The line! The tables are on top of each other! The servers rush you out! But I don’t think enough was said about the pizza, oh, the pizza. Slice NY has a nice write up about Grimaldi’s, and it was what guided me there in the first place. Best pizza in NY? I haven’t had DiFara’s yet, but for the time being, Grimaldi’s, you have my award. The sauce was amazing, not overspiced, not too sweet. The fresh mozzarella melted in my mouth, and I feel sure I could eat that crust for all future meals. I ate four slices.

Once you walk in to Jacques Torres, you have no choice but to consume chocolates, even if you did just eat four slices of pizza. I picked up the hot chocolate, and then we each got a small hot chocolate, one wicked, one classic. It was pure, melted chocolate heaven in those little orange cups. I have no doubt in my mind that that was a melted chocolate bar and a little milk. As it started to cool, it got thicker and thicker. I think if I had put it in the fridge, it would have solidified again.

I can never consume instant hot chocolate again.

2006-11-21T12:22:00.000-08:00

Snickerdoodles
Recipe from Nigella Lawson

Picture from flickr user.

This past weekend, I did what can only be described as a dangerous amount of baking. I don’t have much of a sweet tooth, aside from the heaping teaspoon of Trader Joe’s sugar in the raw that goes in to my morning coffee. I’m not tempted by donuts, one Hershey kiss is enough for me, and while I thoroughly enjoy some Chips Deluxe, I have a two cookie limit that I am perfectly happy with.

This weekend, however, something happened. Call it holiday spirit, call it aliens, call it hormones, but I could not stop trying to use all of the butter I had in the refridgerator. Friday found me working from home and the immediate need to make macaroons, chocolate dipped ones nonetheless. I powered through the early Thanksgiving crowds for coconut and almond extract and sweet heaven, they didn’t disappoint. When we weren’t packaging macaroons for our movie date and eating them for breakfast, I was cruising How to be a Domestic Goddess and wondering what else I could make with the ingredients at hand. We had eaten an entire gateaux au chocolat fondant, recipe from Molly at Orangette, in a matter of two days and as good as the raspberry chocolate tarts looked, I needed something without chocolate. I landed on the snickerdoodle.

I had never had a snickerdoodle, but they were definitely fun to say. Apparently, Pepperidge Farms makes a version I should try, but I plucked my recipe from Nigella. She described them as a cross between a cookie and a doughnut, but with a harder crumb. I had no idea what it meant at the time, but after eating one, the harder crumb was explained. They retained their ball shape, and crumbled like a biscuit when bitten in to, but then dissolved in to a cinnamon sugar delight. This cookie was made for breakfast.

2006-10-18T09:25:00.000-07:00

I have a girl crush on Nigella Lawson (my other girl crushes include Jenny Lewis and Gwen Stefani). When I was in grad school, Nigella Bites would come on at 10 on the Style Network, and I could be found watching it, usually eating dry cereal in sharp contrast to whatever Nigella was making. She was beautiful, she looked like she actually ate her food and enjoyed it, she was funny, she had an accent—she was a cooking goddess to me. My favorite moment is still when she opened up cans of crushed tomatoes and said sarcastically, "I spent all morning crushing these tomatoes and putting them in cans."

I’ve had Nigella’s cookbooks before, but mostly to flip through and ooh over, because really, where was I going to get orange water or maple extract in Jersey City. Do you know how hard it is to buy decent fruit in Jersey City? But then I decided I was going to conquer her. Lee had given me How to be a Domestic Goddess when I noticed it was out in paperback and I decided I wanted it. I read it cover to cover (Fairycakes! Molten Chocolate Babycakes! Chocolate Pavs!) and then put it on my shelf.

But Nigella, our time has come.

I was going to make cookies for Lee’s birthday and I was not going to get the recipe off of the bag of chocolate chips. I was going to make them. I decided on the Sweet and Salty Cookies and tried to memorize the ingredients so I could pick them up on my way home (error #1). I stopped at our god awful C-Town and bought Krasdale salted peanuts, more butter, some sugar since I have had a heavy hand with my coffee lately and wasn’t sure I had enough, and eggs. I went home, assembled my ingredients and thought it over.

Nigella had shortening listed as an ingredient and begged that we use shortening with the butter because it would make the cookies lighter. I didn’t have shortening—I would just use butter (error #2). She wanted me to use self rising flour—I had all purpose. But all purpose must cover ALL PURPOSES, including self rising, right? (error #3; turns out there is no place for semantics in baking).

So I mixed. The time came for the butter and it was so hard still, I wasn’t sure what to do. So, in my brilliance, I decided to melt it. I melted a stick and a half of butter and mixed it in to the batter. It blended well and I folded in the peanuts. Then I picked up a spoonful and realized it wasn’t dough, it was batter. Crap—the melted butter screwed up the texture (error #4). I stuck it in the freezer for 5 minutes and it solidified some, so we’re good.

I spooned it on to the baking sheet and put them in the oven. 4 minutes later they were baking in a pool of butter. The butter was boiling all around them. So (no lie), I took the cookies out and mopped up the butter with a paper towel and put them back in the oven. I repeated this twice, and finally the cookies were brown and as done as they could be. I let them cool and then broke off a piece.

The verdict—they weren’t bad, but they weren’t exactly cookies. They were dense (see #2), and they were squat (#3), but they were actually an excellent breakfast cookie. Eaten with a cup of coffee, they will fill you up all day.

Nigella, we’ll meet again.

2006-07-14T07:59:00.000-07:00

Kate's Joint
E. 4th Street at Avenue B

I’m not a very good vegetarian. I’ll opt for a bowl of cereal rather than tofu or beans. I don’t like mushrooms. Probably 80% of all of my meals consist of some form of bread and cheese. I eat fish. I crave bacon.

And these are the reasons that I love Kate’s Joint.

Kate’s does vegetarian food for not very good vegetarians, in my opinion. I can get gravy fries, unturkey club, veggie burgers with special sauce, everything that I craved in my meat eating world, as brief as it was, is reimagined at Kate’s. In my mind, good vegetarians eat seaweed, eat at Angelica Kitchen or Gobo, and enjoy their vegetables. Bad ones eat things that taste like meat.

Lee’s sister was in town and we were eating our way through Manhattan. We had had gelato at the Chelsea Market, cupcakes at Magnolia and Babycakes in the Lower East Side, we had Thai ‘lunch boxes’ at Regional Thai, omelettes at Joe Jrs, coffee at Think, and sandwiches at Dojo. We woke up that Sunday morning and were completely blank on what to do for breakfast (but still hungry, as we are a bottomless group). We offered her (a carnivore, I may add) the option of the local taqueria brunch, which included chilaquiles, huevos racheros, café con leches, etc., or Kate’s Joint. She chose Kate’s.

When we got there, it was 11 (unfortunately too early for a Sunday bloody Mary) and there were only a few tables taken. I think the ridiculous amount of heat outside was seeping in to the restaurant because it was warm in there. We decided to sit smack in the middle of the room to avoid any extra sun from the windows and were quickly brought menus and offered coffee, which we all declined since we wanted to have some early morning liquor (which we couldn’t have anyway—can you spot the bitterness?) I ordered huevos rancheros and an orange juice and a coffee (I tend to drink more than one thing at a time), Kase ordered the sweet potato hash with tofu scramble rather than eggs and collards, and Lee had the breakfast burrito with tofu scramble.

Yup. The two that actually eat meat got tofu scramble. I got real eggs.

I’ve had what was considered to be authentic huevos rancheros before and they were good. I don’t think Kate’s Joint would win any awards for authenticity, but it is now my favorite breakfast item in the tri-state area. They used a smear of black beans on a toasted tortilla (the crispiness of the tortilla was what won me over), topped it with perfectly over-medium eggs, so that the yolk ran out, but not too much, and then added more black beans. A fresh salsa came on the side which was only chopped tomato, cilantro, and onion; homefries were on the side as well which I ate in perfect bites with some eggs and beans. It was salty but flavorful, and was the perfect savory breakfast item. I have already had three occasions where I wanted it again. It was less than a week ago that we went.

2006-06-28T15:35:00.000-07:00

Iron Chef, Jersey City Edition- What can be made from my fridge?
Accompanied by "Float On," by Modest Mouse

Everything in my refrigerator can fall in to three categories: dairy, carbs, and old. Produce is bought and used in a few days, but it never lingers. I'm not the type to pick up some tomatoes and fresh corn just to have on hand. If I buy produce, I buy it for a reason, for a recipe in mind.

Because of this, and the contents of my fridge, Lee faces a challenge every time he opens the door to make breakfast. He does the same thing every morning he is at my place-- he gets up, under the guise of going to the bathroom and brushing his teeth, but in reality, he is using this time to judge my refrigerator silently. I'm on to him now and he knows not to complain, but to just find a way.

I don't have pictures of it, but Lee, can I compliment you again on the blue cheese and apple omelette, with the apple cider sauce? It was like the best fruit and cheese plate ever, folded in to a high cholesterol pocket, which made it even better. It was a stunner.

The morning of this picture though, he had slightly more to work with. The evening before was our anniversary dinner, written about a few posts below. So there was leftover polenta, tomato, and I had my usual dozen eggs. And what was created was magic.

Basically, when cooked polenta cools, you can slice it. And after you slice it, you can saute it in olive oil until it is lightly fried up on both sides. Be careful though-- it spits back at you fiercely. Top that with an over medium egg, sauteed tomatoes, and a crumble of goat cheese, and you have a savory breakfast that hits all of your tastebuds.

The first time I heard Modest Mouse was well after "Float On" flooded the airwaves. I worked in radio in college (not college radio, but a local station) and since they closed (were bought by the man), I haven't found a station that really makes me happy, so I tend to be out of the loop on the big songs of the moment. We were walking in to a dance performance of Lee's friend, and "The World at Large" was playing in the lobby. Did you ever hear a song and are convinced you know it? That is how this song felt to me, like I had known it for a while and I was hearing it again for the first time. It really was the first time I had heard it though-- I was just so struck with it, I adopted it as my own right away.

One of the performances was two girls in teal party dresses, doing choreography to "Float On." The show as a whole leaned more towards art than dance, with people strategically dropping eggs on the stage, and acting out scenes while dancing. These two girls were the only two who just came out and full on danced. And I admired that way more than the artier pieces done by various graduates of the North Carolina School of the Arts.

And when my friend picked out a capri blue, strapless, tea length dress for me to wear as a maid of honor dress in her wedding, I was secretly thrilled that I too now had a 'Float On" party dress.

Well, we'll float on good news is on the way...

2006-06-27T08:34:00.000-07:00

Think Coffee
Mercer Street at W. 3rd

I adore iced coffee. This isn't new information for people who know me, have met me, or basically passed me on the street (and it definitely isn't new information to the employees of the Dunkin' Donuts near my work). I don't drink it year round, but when the temperature hits about 65 degrees, I have to have my coffee iced rather than hot. Whether it is a warm spell in February or the 90 degree heat of July, my coffee has to come on ice*.

When New York Magazine came out with their list of best iced coffee, it became my Bible for summer. I memorized their names and locations so that when I was in any of the neighborhoods, I could find these fantastic treats.

So Friday night, we went to see Wordplay at the IFC theater on W. 3rd (excellent movie, highly recommended). It was only 9:30 when we got out, so I suggested heading over to Think to try their iced coffee. New York Mag says they use a cold brew system that takes away the bitterness of iced coffee and I wanted to find out.

The place was gorgeous, quiet and pleasant, and definitely a hang out. They sell sandwiches, bagels, egg creams, and coffee-coffee-coffee. We each got an iced coffee, and I added a little cream to it. Before I added my sugar, I thought, let me see if I want sugar in this.

Ready for how good and non-bitter it was? It didn't need sugar.

It was the smoothest, loveliest cup of coffee I have ever had. I just hung their postcard up on my bulletin board at work to remind myself how much I loved it.

2006-06-27T08:19:00.000-07:00

Bianca
5 Bleecker Street between Elizabeth and Bowery
Cash Only

One of my best friends from high school (and college, and beyond) spent this last year working in New York. She doesn’t like that far to begin with; her NJ Transit train will drop her off at Penn Station in about an hour and twenty minutes, which is the commute she did for this last year. But the best part was the access. I could have dinner with her any day of the week basically. At a moment’s notice (well, 30 minutes notice, via e-mail), we could be at Agave sipping happy hour margaritas, Il Cucina di Pesce with our significant others, drinking wine in the garden, or at a Starbucks for a quick coffee and chat pick-me-up.

Unfortunately for me, but happily for her, another offer came along and she will be working in NJ once again, driving to work instead of riding the rails each morning. Even though she says she will still meet me for dinners, it feels like the end of an era. So for last night, our last dinner while she worked in Manhattan, we went to Bianca on Bleecker Street.

She beat me there (the F train—I’ll run when I want to) and as I approached her, she said, “It sounds like a huge party is in there.” We walked in, and one table of 8 was there, the loudest group of any eight people I had ever seen. Not boisterous loud either; I can appreciate that. What they were having was a shrieking contest of who could prove the other wrong louder.

An extremely cordial woman seated us, and we began discussing our plan of attack. I suggested skipping the appetizer in favor of dessert; she said she was trying to be good and couldn’t have dessert, so we settled on an appetizer of lasagnette di verdure, and we each went for the spaghettini pomodoro. The appetizer was like a mini-eggplant parmesan without any of the heavy frying; it was lightly breaded, I would say barely, and sliced thin. The layers had zucchini, parmesan cheese, and a pomodoro sauce on it, and we literally cleaned the plate. Any sauce that was left was swept on to slices of bread and forks.

The spaghettini was a perfect portion, and with one bite, we both said, wow, this is homemade. The pasta was cooked to al dente, the sauce was the same fantastic sauce from the appetizer, and again the bread came out to do some mopping up. Washed down with a glass of pinot grigio, it was a carb-tastic meal.

When the waiter came by with dessert menus, she was the first to say, okay, lets look. We decided to split one thing, and she suggested the apple tart, gelato, or panna cotta. I went for the panna cotta. “Of course, the worst one for you,” she said, but didn’t disagree. It arrived with a caramel sauce topping, and was thick and creamy, much more custard than jell-o, which is how it should be (dessert chefs, do you hear me?). It was a battle to the last bite.

After all this perfection, I was shocked that the bill only came to 42. An appetizer, two pastas, a dessert, and a glass of wine for under fifty—and the food is some of the best Italian I have had in Manhattan. I’m already considering going back tonight.

2006-06-21T15:45:00.000-07:00

The Anniversary Dinner Tilapia Dijonaisse, Polenta Parmigiana, and Sauteed Tomatoes and Spinach, oh my!
Accompanied by "Sic Transit Gloria...Glory Fades" -Brand New

For our first anniversary, it was a no brainer. We had to go to our neighborhood favorite, Ria's, on Mercer Street in Jersey City. While it wasn't the location of our first date, it was the first place that we were known as a couple, the first place we thought to go to when celebrating, in need of comfort, bored, on a date, brunch, dinner, lunch, midday cafe con leches... the list goes on. So to celebrate the first year we were together, we went to Ria's. We split the paella, drank a glass of wine, and sat there forever talking, because that is what we do best.

In a good way, of course.

But for the second anniversary, we couldn't decide. We came up with tons of restaurants we wanted to try, ranging from the Food Network genre of Babbo or Mesa Grill, to small recommendations like Perbacco or Piadina. Finally, we decided we had to cook. That is what we enjoy doing with each other the most (aside from the talking, duh) and that was what seemed appropriate for year 2.

We drove over to the shiny A&P in Hoboken, far superior to our local supermarket, and looked for inspiration in the aisles. Our menu became what you see above.

Tilapia seems to have had a reputation for a ghetto fish, cheap and the bottom of the luxury fish chain. I adore tilapia. I'm new to fish, having broken my vegetarianism to begin adding protein to my dietm but tilapia can have so many different lives with what it is served with. At Ria's, I have had it Dominican style, sauteed with red peppers, tomatoes, and onions. I have had it at Casa in the West Village, served with lime, rice, zuchini, and fried banana. I have had it blackened, with fruit, served in a taco, and dijonaisse, which is one of my favorites and what we made this night. And the empty plates speak for themselves.

Tilapia Dijonaisse

Tilapia (however much you think you need)

Spicy brown mustard

Breadcrumbs

Olive Oil (for saute)

The first time we made this, we thinned out the mustard with a little wine, and while that was good, it wasn't as crusty, mustardy fantastic as when we didn't thin it out at all and just piled it on.

Spread the mustard on either side of the fish and dredge through the breadcrumbs. Saute in a little bit of olive oil (just enough to coat the pan).

The tomatoes and spinach side were a whim because of the really nice looking tomatoes at the supermarket. We cooked down the spinach and then sauteed the tomatoes in Jane's to get all of the spices in at once.

The polenta was instant, but I'm not a polenta snob. I adore instant polenta, with tons of parmesan cheese... mm. Even better the next day, fried under eggs (consider that foreshadowing).

The song, in honor of the boy who hung out with me for two years, is not a romantic song by any means. It is loud, with a perfect beat, falling in to that scr-emo genre, and the refrain is 'die young and save yourself.' But this cd was basically on repeat when we first met, as co-workers, then as friends who saw the occasional movie together, or got the occasional happy hour margaritas while suppressing our mutual affection. I associate it with a very specific stretch of the Gowanus, right before the exit to his old apartment in Park Slope. There was always traffic, and as I inched towards that exit, looking forward to seeing him, this was the song that matched my excitement and anticipation perfectly.

Keep the noise low. She doesn't wanna blow it. Shaking head to toe while your left hand does "the show me around." Quickens your heartbeat. It beats me straight into the ground.

2006-06-09T10:27:00.000-07:00

I waited tables for 5 years and I loved it. I know, it is a labor intensive job, dealing with the public is a nightmare, and your nights can vary from making hundreds to having one table and eating pizza behind the bar.

But I love it for various reasons.

When the money is good, it is good, as in 6 hours compares to what I make in 40 hours at my desk job. There is a camaraderie you have with other wait staff that you don’t have with your co-workers in any other job. No one at my current job has watched me be berated for forgetting toast points on my smoked salmon appetizer. No one at my current job has dropped what they were doing to help me make 12 cappuccinos.

And the recaps! I’m not sure a physicist could talk about physics as long as a waitress can talk about serving. I’m pretty sure a fellow server and I could have talked about a shift longer than the shift lasted. And this probably would have happened at the local diner, where we would get extra respect and whipped cream because we rolled in wearing our black and whites with our war marks (in my case, usually butter) on the shirts.

And, since I am not naming this restaurant, I have a few things to get off of my chest:

1. The coffee is all decaf. We have never had regular in the kitchen. So when you sent it back, telling me that you could just smell that it was regular, I smiled, apologized, walked in to the kitchen, counted to ten, and brought you the same cup of coffee, only this time you were delighted.
2. When the espresso machine was “broken,” I just didn’t have the time to drop everything and make you a cappuccino.
3. I told him no butter, but odds are, you got butter. He studied in France; he hates you for your special requests.
4. Also, if you asked for no butter but ordered blue cheese on your salad, you got butter. He saw everything.
5. That glass of wine we charge you almost seven dollars for? The entire bottle is 6.

But this post isn’t about the restaurant. It is about lobster. Lobster Lobster Lobster.

I recently had the opportunity to eat at the restaurant where I worked for all those years, and of course I was going to get the lobster that I had spent 5 years recommending. I had had it before, but I forgot how fantastic it is. It is butter dripping down my chin? Who cares fantastic. I had scrapes on my hand from digging the meat out of the claws with the little fork, but I got it all out.

I have never made a lobster myself, but I can offer some recommendations:

Don’t drop it in the pot to boil. That is supposed to be the most painful way for the lobster to die. Instead, split it with a super sharp knife between the eyes and cut off the claws to boil separately.
Put it in a deep sauté pan and boil it that way. Then it cooks, and since it is already split open, when it is done, you have easy access.
Pour some clarified butter over it while cooking.
To really up the fantastic, and calories, add some breadcrumbs to the top of it, another ladle of butter, and broil it for a few minutes until brown. By doing this last, the lobster still has all of the steam cooked goodness, but a little bit of brown tastes great too.

2006-05-13T13:14:00.000-07:00

Spinach-Tomato-Feta Quiche
Accompanied by: "Feeling Oblivion" by Turin Brakes

I didn't really come to enjoy cooking until about two years ago. Up until then, my cooking consisted of making a grilled cheese without setting off the smoke alarm (you can laugh, but it was an accomplishment when it happened), heating any variety of lean cuisine, or stouffers, in the oven, heating up spaghetti-o's (I cannot explain it. I am 26 years old and I adore them), or making scrambled eggs.

Sometime, between moving in to my current apartment with my adorable kitchen, and meeting Lee, I began to enjoy it more. I still loathe cleaning up, and have been known to avoid making certain things to avoid cleaning up after those things, but I have learned to enjoy it. Whether I'm good at it is still up for discussion. But one of the first "grown up" things I learned to make, and eventually made my own, was quiche. It was basically a fancy variation on scrambled eggs, I thought. I could handle that. And I could, with the guidance of a very serious 1970s Betty Crocker cookbook.

Then, when I went to make one recently for Easter dinner, my world was shaken. I couldn't find Betty. Granted, she wasn't mine, but my roommates, so my roommate may have given her away, or lent her to someone. I was forced to improvise/ depend on my shaky memory for the quiche. After the shaking subsided, I did it. I apologize for the weird measurements to follow, but look! It looks nice, doesn't it?

1-9 inch pie crust
about 8 ounces of feta
a pint of grape tomatoes
frozen spinach
6 eggs
Half and Half

In a bowl, stir up the eggs, and about a pint of half and half (half a quart is what I usually do). Throw in some salt and pepper, just a bit.

In the pie crust, crumble up the feta (you know, I said 8 ounces, but go for more). Slice the grape tomatoes in half and spread them in the crust as well. About enough to cover the crust. Do the same with the frozen spinach.

Pour the egg and half and half mixture over the ingredients in the pie crust. There will be more than you need, but not much.

Put that in a 425 degree oven for about 45 minutes (definitely check on it before then, but thats about how long it takes). Test it with a knife before you take it out-- make sure the knife comes out clean.

There is a song on the Garden State Soundtrack called Fair by Remy Zero. I love it. After hearing the song, and my declarations of love, my sister informed me, "You would like Turin Brakes." I noticed the CD one day and put it in the stereo to find that all of it was scratched except for the first song. That would have been disappointing if the first song hadn't been one of the most beautiful, perfect songs I had ever heard.

I took an art class not too long after this discovery, and I used to walk up 6th Avenue from my class to the train on Thursday nights, roughly 9 pm each week. 6th Avenue at this stretch was usually packed-- tons of businesses called the area home. But at night, it was quiet and dark, and it felt like the city was mine. And that was my favorite time to listen to Turin.

If things get real, promise to take me somewhere else, By the time fear takes me over will we still be rolling & feeling oblivion.

2006-05-08T10:36:00.000-07:00

Vegan Chili (until I tainted it with sour cream and cheese)
Accompanied by “Gold Digger” by Kanye West

There is a website I check out every once in a while. I first found my way there through this recipe, when it was posted on Apartment Therapy: Kitchen. Since the day I pilfered her chili recipe, I hit her up every once in a while to see what is new and in that time, Amber, I think we are the soul mates. We both tend to start crafty projects, and while I am not skilled at it, I am desperate to improve at knitting. Her tastebuds are just like mine, as every time she posts a recipe, I want to try it (avocado hummus, here I come). The kicker was when I pathetically began the Couch to 5K training (we’re still doing it, Lee is doing great, I curse a lot, but I only miss about ten seconds of running time each time we go out, so I’m getting there), logged on to her site, and found she was too.

Amber’s recipe and chili picture is here

The only things we did differently were:

Added more garlic. Like the cowbell, you can never have too much garlic.
Used corn instead of mixed vegetables.
Used beer to thin it out when it got too thick and glued itself to my pot.
Roasted the jalapenos to make them even tastier.

Lee then called his grandmother for a cornbread recipe. Apparently, they don’t do sweet corn bread in the south, which I find ironic, as everything else they make is defined by sweet (think iced tea and anything Paula Deen makes). He basically used the recipe on the back of the corn meal mix, which I don’t have in front of me, but you can see our results in the picture. He said it was fantastic, and that hour long conversation with his grandmother to get the instructions was worth it. I found it too dry and crumbly, and I used a dangerous amount of butter in an attempt to make it moister. It all comes down to the fact that I like cornbread mixes with tons of sugar. I blame my Yankee upbringing.

The Yuengling was courtesy of the liquor store, although in the future, Lee plans to brew his own beer again.

Did you guys see the episode of My Super Sweet Sixteen where L.A. Reid’s kid Aaron was having his party? And his godfather Diddy was going to be there, and Jermaine Dupree was the DJ, but he couldn’t get Kanye to come? Kanye said something lame like, Oh, I have designers flying in from Italy that weekend? And Aaron was disappointed, but was like, ok, Kanye, whatever? So Aaron rolls up to his party, and is rocking out, and all the kids are screaming cause Diddy is there, and LaLa from MTV is hosting a red carpet, and they are at Jay-Z’s 40/40 Club, right? And L.A. and his wife, Pebbles, brings Aaron on stage and say, we could have gotten you a car, but we got you something no one else could get? And then from behind the curtain, you heard, “I never said she was a golddigger”? And even though you weren’t at the party, but were instead pathetically sitting on your couch which is really a loveseat, in your pajamas, eating wheat thins, you screamed because you couldn’t believe Kanye was there? Yeah, me neither.

2006-04-24T13:45:00.000-07:00

Old Devil Moon
E. 12th Street

Picture above? Totally stolen from New York Mag. Although to give them a plug, they do have great information on restaurants.

Friday night went a little something like this:

Hey want to go on a date?
Yeah, can we try that half vegetarian southern comfort food place in the East Village?
Huh? Yeah, sure.

Old Devil Moon is located on E. 12th Street between Avenue A & B. I’m not certain we’ve ever walked down E. 12th that much, but we passed at least two other restaurants I wanted to try (Hearth and Angelica Kitchen). The fact that I was dressed like a slob prevented me from asking Lee if we could change our destination.

The block it was on wasn’t particularly flashy, so when we saw ODM, we had no doubt we were there. It was like flea market chic gone wild, with a dash of excessive Christmas lights, and a little of “what the hell is that on the wall?” Oh, and animal heads. They weren’t packed at all (this was about 8 pm on a Friday), but the waitress told us that if we wanted a booth, it would just be a minute. I didn’t know I wanted a booth until I had the option, so compliments to the waitress—she was really good.

It really did just take a minute, and she set us up in the window/ half a white booth/ half a gold booth seat. We had a slice of honey corn bread waiting for us (which, of course, led to some discussion. We decided that no, it wasn’t a leftover from the last table, and no, it wasn’t like a minibar where we had to pay for it if we ate it. Lee said he was just so hungry it seemed too good to be true).

Side note: when we made corn muffins this weekend, he added honey to his.

Anyway, the menu really does cover all aspects for the carnivore and the vegetarian. There are ribs, jambalaya, pulled pork, chicken fingers, catfish, etc. There is also buffalo tofu ‘wings,’ Cajun tofu, BBQ tofu and portabello ‘ribs,’ vegetable and tofu jambalaya, etc. We started with the buffalo tofu wings which were fantastic. I never really thought about it, but I had never had buffalo wings, even when I ate meat. According to the meat expert at the table, the sauce was really spicy and good. Instead of blue cheese dressing, there were blue cheese crumbles on it (which I imagine was because tofu isn’t really a sturdy, dipping food).

For dinner, I had the barbeque tofu and portabello ribs which came with ‘slaw and macaroni and cheese (which wound up being the deciding factor for why I didn’t order the Cajun tofu… it came with yams, and I was in a mac and cheese mood). Lee ordered the pulled pork sandwich, thus establishing to the waitress who of us was making the other eat tofu wings rather than the real thing.

He said his sandwich was ‘okay,’ but needed more sauce. Mine was excellent, and arranged to actually look like ribs. Slices of tofu were followed by a sliver of mushroom. So as not to deny you from a visual, nor from my art skills, here is a Paint! rendition of my dinner.

The macaroni and cheese could have been cheesier, but the slaw was actually quite good. They used vinegar rather than mayonnaise and even included cilantro.

We didn’t have room for dessert, despite my chanting of peanut butter pie, and despite our decision to just walk by Veniero’s and see if it appealed to us. Compliments to you Old Devil Moon—you managed to feed us enough that we didn’t need to get cheesecake and cannolis.

2006-04-19T09:55:00.000-07:00

Banoffee Pie
Accompanied by: “I'll Believe in Anything” by Wolf Parade (Apologies to the Queen Mary, 2005)

I have a friend named N. who is an angel in the kitchen (as well as in basically everything she does). We met by working together in a restaurant her father owned where we both waited tables and followed up the evenings by hitting the local diner together. N. can cook. And not only that, she will for any occasion that may warrant it, and many occasions that don’t warrant it. As a good luck gift before my first day of graduate school, N. made me homemade hummus, something I hadn’t even considered could be made, and not just purchased in a plastic container with a picture of a camel or a sheik on it. When she met my boyfriend for the first time, she baked cookies to endear him to her (and he may disagree, but knowing him, I think it worked).

In other words, N. is sweet and generous, can bake a mean chocolate cake with ganache icing, and makes a grand marnier buttercream frosting that you want to eat with a spoon.

The first time I had this pie was actually at an afternoon birthday party for N. She was dating a Brit, and his parents were in the country for the week. His mother brought a pie that had to be explained to me several times before I really got it. Banoffee pie. I had never tasted anything like it. Sliced up bananas were smothered in caramel on a crust that resembled shortbread to me, but I couldn’t quite place it. This whole caloric monstrosity was topped off with homemade whipped cream.

About a year later, when N. needed the advice of another friend of mine, I invited her with me to dinner. My friend made us eggplant parm from scratch, and pasta, which was spectacular in its own right. N. walked in with a bouquet of flowers, a covered pie dish, and a carton of heavy cream to whip. Banoffee was back in my life, and to this day, all I have to say to the friend is, “Remember when N. made that pie?” to elicit the response of, “That was sooooo good!”

The Brit’s mother had made the crust with digestive biscuits, but I think the standard Pillsbury type frozen crust is just as good. N. boils the condensed milk in the can, but for fear of explosion, we avoided that technique. The original recipe I used is from epicurious.com, but is slightly modified.

Banoffee Pie

2 cans of condensed milk
1 9-inch pie crust, frozen
Pinch of salt
3 large bananas
Heavy cream
Sugar

Pour 2 cans of condensed milk in to a glass pie dish and add a generous pinch of salt. Place this in a roasting pan and fill the pan with water until it reaches about halfway up the pie dish. Refill as needed until the condensed milk has become a rich, caramel color. This takes about 1 hour and 45 minutes to 2 hours.

Put in fridge to cool for about an hour.

In the meantime, poke holes in the frozen pie crust and bake in oven for the recommended time (really poke holes in it. You may think you did, but when it starts puffing up, and up, and up, you can safely assume you didn't break through the bottom). Let that cool about 20 minutes.

After the toffee has cooled, pour it unto the pie crust and spread so it is evenly distributed. Slice up the bananas unto pieces about an inch thick and distribute those over the toffee.

At this point, we dare you to avoid licking the spoon.

In a bowl, beat heavy cream and sugar to taste into whipped cream and spread over the pie.

Cut and enjoy.

And then keep enjoying because over the next few days, the pie will continue to integrate and form the most luscious pudding/pie type dessert you have ever had.

Spring is a time for berry tarts and custards and lighter desserts, in my opinion, so it is odd that this pie immediately comes to mind in warmer weather. Tied in with the Wolf Parade song that accompanied it, it was a perfect spring combination. "I'll Believe in Anything" has become my warm weather anthem. It is pure pop crack addiction.

It also puts me in a bit of a nostalgic mood. The boy who is the other half of this site and the one licking the rubber spatula in the picture above and I first got together in the spring, and something about "look at the trees, and look at my face, and look at a place far away from here" catches all of that nervousness and excitement and what will happen next feeling of that time to me. Two years later, sitting outside in Union Square eating a salad, or having a beer at an outdoor table, or listening to Wolf Parade brings that all back to me.

"Give me your eyes, I need sunshine."