Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, May 14, 2008 at 6:15 PM
It wasn’t exactly a con job, but I did end up spending way too much for the fontina cheese at the local cheesemonger. The man was describing some heavenly stuff that he had just gotten in and I simply got mesmerized. It smelled wonderful and complex and agreed to a 1/2 pound before I even thought about asking the price. When the total came in over $10 I realized I had surpassed my intentions. My original goal was to sprinkle it over some broccoli...and that’s it. That’s an expensive side dish. Cheese this good needed a higher lot in life.
The fiancée actually remembered this recipe out of the well-worn Top One Hundred Pasta Sauces. She claims we had this dish before, and she’s usually right. But we definitely didn’t have it with fontina this good. The level of nutty, earthiness is incredible considering how little cheese is actually used. All the rest is vegetable goodness, and the zucchini, especially, adds some wonderful sweetness. It’s just another potato and pasta recipe that sounds illogical, and yet creates a dish like this one. The recipe's name translates simply as "Pasta with Green Vegetables," but it sounds so much better in Italian.
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Posted by The Serious Eats Team, May 14, 2008 at 2:45 PM
- makes 1 1/2 quarts -
Adapted from Entertaining by Martha Stewart.
Ingredients
4 or 5 stems broccoli
3 red bell peppers
1/2 small bunch fresh tarragon or basil
1 cup sour cream
2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
1/4 cup tarragon vinegar
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons olive oil
Salt and pepper
Procedure
1. Wash broccoli and cut into small florets. Seed the peppers and slice them into slivers. Wash and mince the herb.
2. Blanch the broccoli in rapidly boiling water until tender (4 to 5 minutes). Plunge into ice water to cool and then drain well.
3. Combine the remaining ingredients with the minced herb. Pour half of the dressing over the broccoli and pepper slivers and toss well. Taste and add more dressing if desired; the full amount of dressing was far too much for me, which I discovered after tossing it all it, but maybe it will suit you.
Posted by The Serious Eats Team, May 14, 2008 at 2:45 PM
- makes 3 cups -
Adapted from Entertaining by Martha Stewart.
Ingredients
1/4 cup raisins
2 tablespoons cider vinegar
1 pound carrots, peeled and grated
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons light olive oil (or a mixture of vegetable and olive oil)
Salt and Pepper
Dash of cinnamon or nutmeg (optional)
Finely chopped parsley
Procedure
1. Soak the raisins in the vinegar for 30 minutes. Drain, reserving vinegar. Mix raisins with the carrots.
2. Add the reserved vinegar to the oil, season with salt and pepper, add cinnamon or nutmeg for additional flavor, and toss with the carrots and raisins. Sprinkle with parsley.
Note: It is best to grate the carrots by hand on a coarse grater, but the job can be done quickly, and almost as effectively, in the food processor.
Posted by Robin Bellinger, May 12, 2008 at 1:00 PM
Lately I’ve been wondering if I should add "freezing food in individual portions" to my list of interests on Facebook. For one long, dark year I lived in a Park Slope studio with no freezer, unable to save leftovers and frequently forced to eat entire pints of ice cream in a single sitting. Ever since I have appreciated my freezer and used it as much as possible, although the serving size of ice cream that satisfies me now remains tragically huge.
Since I don’t always have the time or ingredients to pack even a sandwich, my frozen stash of soup, stew, and other leftovers has often been the only thing standing between me and a mediocre but depressingly expensive business-district lunch. Although some things (especially potato-based soups, in my experience) suffer for having been frozen, most come out just fine and are given additional relish by the thrill (okay, for me) of enjoying the fruits of my earlier labor.
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Posted by Ed Levine, May 11, 2008 at 12:00 PM
This week's Cartoon Kitchen features Serious Eats' cartoonist in residence Larry Gonick's spin on asparagus. —Ed Levine
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Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, May 9, 2008 at 4:30 PM
I’ve been on a little cauliflower kick lately and just couldn’t turn down the possibility of what was essentially cauliflower mashed potatoes. Yep, it’s a holdout from the low-carb craze. But I didn’t care if it was healthy; I just wanted to see if it was worth it. I found the recipe in Ted Allen’s The Food You Want to Eat, and even he seems a little ashamed of it, regardless of the fact that it ended up being delicious.
And he’s right, the cauliflower puree never feels like a mashed potato rip-off. Instead it makes an earthier offering that’s perfect with lighter dishes like fish. To spruce up things Ted advises a few possible additions. He likes to add curry powder, English mustard, blue cheese or parmesan. I settled on the last item, adding huge grated handful at the very end. It won’t replace mashed potatoes on the Thanksgiving table, but might provide a lighter side to some grilling sessions.
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Posted by Blake Royer, May 8, 2008 at 4:15 PM
A few things attracted me to this recipe: its supposed Basque origins, its easy preparation in a food processor, and a quick 15-minute cooking time. I imagined the gratin of white beans would be crusty and creamy, like a long-cooked cassoulet.
It didn’t quite work out that way—what came out of the oven was satisfying, but not particularly mind-blowing. If nothing else, though, this recipe is a shining example of the creaminess potential of beans. With only 2 tablespoon of butter for four generous servings (plus a glug of olive oil), the resulting hummus-like spread was as smooth and rich as ever. That said, it was also a bit bland. The next time I try something like this, I’d go with a more assertive flavor like garlic or cayenne; the rosemary and peppers just wasn’t enough to compete with the wide, open taste of white beans.
But there’s nothing wrong with the method, and the result is a melty, healthy spread that I served with a pile of sautéed spinach and a grilled sausage. Next time, I’d only purée half the beans to give it some more textural interest, lose the cheese on top, double the bread crumbs, and put it under the broiler to assure a flavorful, crusty top.
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Posted by Robin Bellinger, May 7, 2008 at 2:00 PM
The first time I really sat down and read Entertaining was when I was planning my wedding. I opened it looking for ideas and closed it thinking, “Yes, I could make all the food for our wedding, wouldn’t that be personal and fun?” Everyone talked some sense into me, thank goodness, and my self-catering ambitions were quietly dropped.
Don’t let this story deter you. Among the delusion-inspiring accounts of “Desserts for Forty: Soirée Dansante” and “Cocktails for Two Hundred: Country Fare,” one can find in this book ideas for relatively simple dinners at home. Last week I made tomato soup and French bread. I was too tired to make the green salad I had planned, but with a piece of Gruyère the soup and bread made a very pleasing meal indeed.
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Posted by Robyn Lee, May 7, 2008 at 12:00 PM
The following recipe is from the May 7th edition of our weekly recipe newsletter. To receive this newsletter in your inbox, sign up here!
Why not treat your mom this coming Mother's Day with a plate of chocolate banana waffles? This recipe from Alice Medrich's Chocolate Holidays tops chocolate flavored waffles with bananas sautéed in sugar and rum.
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Posted by Raphael, May 6, 2008 at 1:45 PM
Need another way to preserve your ramps aside from encasing them in logs of butter? Follow this recipe for pickled ramps and you'll end up with sweet-and-sour ramps that will extend ramps season a few extra weeks, or even months. The ramps are quickly blanched before pickling to preserve the bright pink and green colors. Chopped up or whole, these are best with roasted meats, fish, or pasta.
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Posted by Robin Bellinger, May 6, 2008 at 12:45 PM
Baby is kicking every day now and already has a couple of toys and some astonishingly pretty clothes, which for some reason makes her seem much more real. I’m dying to know what she’ll be like and what her tastes will be. Will she be interested when I try to share all the books I loved as a little girl? Will she be a happy and adventurous eater, or is there a lot of coaxing in my future?
Two years ago a friend’s four-year-old daughter won my heart with her spontaneous request that I read to her from Little House in the Big Woods. Then she charmed me by showing me around her father’s beautiful vegetable garden, capping the tour with the eager exclamation, “Let’s eat some chard!” Andrew thinks involving children in gardening gives them an investment in eating their vegetables, and we hope someday to live near a patch of soil that will allow us to test that theory. In the meantime, chard-eating children remain an obsession of mine, although I’m pretty sure we’ll think baby is brilliant and perfect even if she eventually begs for Bratz dolls and Kraft singles instead of books and leafy greens. I hear that’s what it’s like to be a parent.
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Posted by Robin Bellinger, May 5, 2008 at 3:45 PM
For a month or two now I have been searching for an Asian or Asian-y noodle dish that would make a nice lunch. A few candidates didn't pan out, and the one that did was a soup, which I know some people don't care to bother packing up for work. Finally, though, Deborah Madison came through with her refreshing salad of chilled mung bean noodles with dulse and crushed peanuts from Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone.
I'm afraid it looks as if this week is going to be rainy in New York, but for those of you with happier weather, this is just the thing to eat outside on a warm day: cool, full of bright flavors, satisfying without being heavy. I liked the generous dose of raw ginger, but people who find that kind of thing overwhelming might want to start with 1 teaspoon and work their way up. I also added a few dashes of soy sauce and would not have minded a little more spice; maybe I'll leave the jalapeño seeds in next time. This noodle salad keeps in the refrigerator for four or five days, in my experience, and travels quite well: last week I enjoyed it on an airplane while everyone else made do with a doll-sized bag of pretzels.
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Posted by Blake Royer, May 1, 2008 at 4:15 PM
I'd never eaten a ramp before in my life. But there I found myself week after week, trolling greenmarkets, unable to wait for something other than root vegetables. My own obsession was mysterious, but the general public excitement over ramps is remarkable. Ignored as nuisances for years, they are also called wild leeks and have flat, floppy leaves and a beautiful purple stem. The flavor is an earthy pungent combination of scallions and garlic, and is usually served simply grilled, in pastas or risottos, or baked into gratins and frittatas. The prices are quite fetching—up to $20/pound—for what is essentially a weed. When they first came, ramps were often sold out at the market by 9 a.m.
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Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, April 30, 2008 at 7:00 PM
Gordon Ramsay’s In the Heat of the Kitchen has been fun to look through, but I haven’t really been able to put it to much use. Most of the recipes seem rather complex for a hectic weekday night. So I was a little surprised to find this quick little broccoli recipe stuck between “Caramelized baby onions with beet jus” and “corn fritters with lime crème fraîche." With only eight ingredients, seven of which I had already, this proved to be a perfectly practical side.
While the crisp garlic is fun and those onions sure do add a lot of sweetness, what really separates this dish from a standard accompaniment is the oyster sauce. It somehow binds all the ingredients and transforms this into an interesting side dish worth paying attention to. It’s such a simple addition, too. This, of course, all depends on whether you have oyster sauce just hanging around the fridge ready to go in to random dishes. I do. Its cost is so small, and it keeps surprising me with dishes like this one.
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Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, April 28, 2008 at 5:00 PM
When I pulled this from the oven, I was livid. Both the cauliflower and capers came out looking awfully disappointing. And by “awfully disappointing,” I mean “burnt." I just couldn’t believe Martha Stewart, of all people, would construct such a disastrous mess of a recipe. I mean, you all can see this, right? Those little black balls are the capers. I almost chucked it right there.
Ends up all those crispy black bits are full-flavored goodness. I really should have known better. I had no use for cauliflower until I learned that it gets this wonderful nutty aroma when you roast the hell out of it. And this caper-assisted recipe is even easier than the curried version I had made before. The fiancée actually finished this before the meat course, forking up all those little black bits as quickly as possible.
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Posted by Robin Bellinger, April 28, 2008 at 1:30 PM
While I’ve been going on and on here about the pleasures of a thoughtfully packed lunch, I have not revealed a shameful truth: at the moment the only lunch I make is my own. My husband is in the home stretch of medical school, which means that he spends long days in hospitals with little time for indulgences such as "lunch." Most days they're given some kind of greasy Chinese food or inferior pizza to wolf down during a midday meeting, and the rest of the time lunch is catch as catch can. My impression is that sitting down and unpacking tasty leftovers or even a good-looking sandwich would be suspect, food being decidedly too frivolous to concern a busy MD (or MD-to-be).
So Andrew asked me to buy him some energy bars, which I have always regarded with distaste and even suspicion. I just don’t think they count as food. I soon discovered that they are rather expensive, and what's more, many of them contain tree nuts, to which Andrew is deathly allergic. Wouldn’t it be more sensible to make something myself, and wouldn’t I feel better about it?
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Posted by Ed Levine, April 27, 2008 at 12:00 PM
This week's Cartoon Kitchen features Serious Eats' cartoonist in residence Larry Gonick's spin on turnips. —Ed Levine
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Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, April 25, 2008 at 4:30 PM
I had to find something to do with my delicious leftover feta. While I wasn’t exactly worried about it going bad, I was afraid that I would attack the whole package with a fork without coming up for air. That’s not an appealing image.
Since I needed a little refinement, I searched all around my favorite sites for some kind direction. I still wanted the cheese to play a central role and didn’t want to spend much more money. This Cook's Illustrated salad felt perfect.
So, I had the fantastic feta, some plump grapes, and I even sprung for a new bottle of raspberry vinegar to properly dress the salad—but it was the small teaspoon of minced rosemary that really made the salad for me. The earthy notes of that herb provided the beautiful contrast to the fruity dressing. Instead of being cloying, the rosemary gave the whole salad balance. I'm always astounded by simple additions that focus a dish.
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Posted by Lucy Baker, April 22, 2008 at 3:30 PM
Sometimes a few simple ingredients come together to create something spectacular. The individual elements compliment each other so well that, when combined, the results are so delicious they border on magical. Think bacon and eggs; chocolate and strawberries; hot dogs, ketchup, and mustard.
To my mind, few dishes are as effortlessly flawless as a classic caprese salad composed of tart tomatoes, creamy mozzarella, and fragrant basil. And while I wouldn't normally mess with perfection, I was intrigued by a recipe in the May issue of Bon Appetit that replaced the tomatoes with slices of fresh mango, and added radicchio to the mix.
A caprese salad with tropical and bitter flavors? I had to try it out for this week's magazine recipe review.
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Posted by Robin Bellinger, April 22, 2008 at 2:00 PM
Last fall I caught up with an old friend over dinner. Slender, tall, beautiful, and very stylish, she has a fancy high-paying job that requires her to travel a lot, eat in swanky restaurants, and generally be glamorous. Average height, average build, and mousy-haired, I spend most of my days working at home in yoga pants and a sweatshirt from the children’s department at Target and get truly excited about the prospect of a Saturday night trip to Brooklyn for dinner out.
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Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, April 21, 2008 at 4:15 PM
I just picked up some fantastic French feta from my local cheese-monger that’s changed my opinion about the stuff. Feta has never really tasted like much to me, but this one does—it’s still crumbly, but it’s not overly salty, and doesn’t have that slightly chalky aftertaste. It reminds me most of a buffalo mozzarella with its luscious body and tangy bite, even though it’s a crumbly goat-based cheese. The cheese inspired this warm spinach salad.
Most of my warm spinach salads have been meat affairs. You know the drill: cook up a whole heap of bacon, toss it on some spinach leaves, and watch them wilt. It’s a delicious winter salad, one that I do love to indulge in, but then I found this recipe that utilized sweet red onions and feta. I’m not sure if all feta acts like my insanely good French version, but mine became gooey and luscious. The sweet red onions provide the sweetness, and the feta gets creamy and gooey. Not exactly a light meal, but it’s a great alternative to the bacon-laden kind.
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Posted by Adam Kuban, April 19, 2008 at 5:00 PM
Each Saturday evening we bring you a Sunday Supper recipe. Why on Saturday? So you have time to shop and prepare for tomorrow.
It's finally starting to get up into the 70s in my neck of the woods, and this weekend looks like it'll be the first truly nice and warm one we've had this spring. It's the kind of weather that draws me out of the kitchen and out to the park or for a bike ride—basically anywhere but the kitchen.
But, a person's gotta eat, and this pasta is good in many ways for a Sunday when you don't want to spend much time at the stove. First, it takes advantage of asparagus, which is in season now; second, it's quick, so you can take advantage of the lengthening days; and third, it's moderately light, so you won't feel like a lead weight afterward.
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Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, April 18, 2008 at 4:00 PM
Most of my experience with broccoli rabe involves a saute pan, some olive oil, garlic, and red pepper flakes. It’s a great, quick dish, with the bitter greens balancing the spicy kick of pepper flakes. But after finding some great looking ones at the market, I wanted to see what else the bitter green could do. I wanted some balance. I wanted something the fiancee would eat, too.
I found this recipe in Food and Wine and it does saute the green with some garlic, but it also adds lemon and butter, which really round out the sharp edges of the dish. It’s a little more refined. It actually ends up looking like creamed spinach, which was perfect, because I sided it up next to a large, bloody ribeye. It was the perfect foil to that well seasoned slab of beef.
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Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, April 16, 2008 at 4:30 PM
I recently stumbled upon Saveur’s 10 favorite pastas and figured I had it made. I love pasta. Saveur loves pasta. We’d meet somewhere and have one hell of a dinner. And this is the one I fell for. I was immediately drawn to this dish because of how robust and filling it all sounded, even though there wasn’t an ounce of meat present. It exceeded my expectations. I was amazed at the full flavor and enormous body of this dish. I suppose the wonderful mushrooms had something to do with it, but I’m going to thank all that salt I dumped into the pasta water before the noodles ever went in. This dish didn’t need an ounce of seasoning beyond the obligatory sprinkling of Parmesan. It tasted as if some reduced stock had been thrown in.
The most expensive item in the meal—the sherry—is also the one that can most easily be substituted. A dry white wine would work perfectly fine. But it would slightly change the nature and aroma of the dish. And splurging for that Spanish beverage wouldn't be a complete waste. A good bottle of sherry is also worth drinking, and paired so well that I'm really glad I bit the bullet and bought the bottle.
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Posted by Adam Kuban, April 16, 2008 at 1:45 PM
Adapted from The River Cottage Cookbook by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.
Ingredients
2 pounds ripe, full-flavored tomatoes, cut in half
2 to 3 garlic cloves, finely chopped
2 tablespoons olive oil
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Procedure
Preheat oven to 350°F. Meanwhile, arrange the tomato halves, tightly packed but not on top of each other, in an ovenproof dish. Mix the garlic with the olive oil; drizzle it evenly over tomatoes. Season lightly with salt and pepper. Roast in oven for 35 to 45 minutes, until tomatoes are soft and pulpy and slightly charred. Rub through a sieve; discard the seeds and skins.
Can Be Used In
Beet Soup with Feta
Posted by Adam Kuban, April 16, 2008 at 1:45 PM
It's been only within the last year or so that I've acquired a taste for beets. I used to hate the earthy flavor and slightly gritty texture, which reminded me of eating dirt. But my girlfriend loves them, and after many dinners out with beet salads and beet dishes as an appetizer, I've come to savor them in all their variations. So when I found this straightforward Beet Soup with Feta, I knew I wanted to highlight it as one of the Cook the Book recipes this week. The book it's adapted from, The River Cottage Cookbook, by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, gives instructions for serving it hot but also mentions that it's good chilled as well, especially if you grate some raw beet on top as a garnish.
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Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, April 11, 2008 at 4:00 PM
What’s interesting about this recipe isn’t necessarily the use of okra (I’ll get to that shortly) but the technique. The rice is cooked uncovered for ten minutes in a pot of water and then transfered to a steamer basket for an additional seven minutes. I suppose this is the poor man’s version of a rice steamer, but I’d never done it before. It’s a little more involved than the ordinary pot of rice. Luckily, it produces fluffy, slightly toothsome rice that’s really delicious.
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Posted by Robin Bellinger, April 11, 2008 at 12:30 PM
A few years ago at a family meal my dad randomly launched into a lengthy panegyric to rice. He does this sometimes—proclaims a deep but previously unvoiced passion—and my mother, sister, and I roll our eyes at the poor outnumbered guy in our family and keep talking about shoes or Martha Stewart or whatever. At the time I thought, How can anyone get excited about rice? It doesn’t taste like anything.
Now I’ve come to see the wisdom of my father’s palate, and if I weren't scared of getting fat I’d eat white rice several times a week, with Indian food, soy sauce and vegetables, or naked but for a pat of butter. Why didn’t dad eat a lot of rice in college, I wonder now. One of his stock stories is how he could subsist for weeks at a time on canned tomato soup when he was putting himself through school, when he would have to sit at a bar and watch his buddies drink beer because he couldn’t afford to buy one for himself. Sometimes for a treat he would eat jelly. So why didn’t he buy himself a big old bag of rice and feast on that? Is it possible that he was scared to cook it?
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Posted by Blake Royer, April 10, 2008 at 3:30 PM
Migas is the Spanish word for crumbs, and refers to the leftover bread originally used in this traditional Spanish dish, which was crumbled and sautéed in olive oil, perhaps with garlic or onion, sometimes peppers, and topped with a fried egg or two. Somewhere on its way from Spain to Mexico, the bread was replaced with leftover tortillas, cheese was added, and the eggs became scrambled to make this version, a Tex Mex tradition. But the name, migas, hung on. The version I made, from the Saralegui family's cookbook Our Latin Table, was creamy and satisfying, a twist on scrambled eggs imbued with the corny flavor of crumbled tortilla chips.
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Posted by Blake Royer, April 8, 2008 at 4:00 PM
I'm usually suspicious of any alterations to traditional basil pesto—those fancy, misguided ideas like trading out pine nuts for pistachios. "Don't mess with perfection," is my feeling. Except in many cases, these other pestos aren't trying to mess up a good thing—they're traditions of their own. Pine nuts, basil, Parmesan, and olive oil may be the most popular and arguably the most sublime of these concoctions (known officially as pesto Genovese), but there are others great ones, like this one from Sicily: pesto Trapanese.
Other than replacing pine nuts with almonds, it's not a sweeping change. But the recipe also adds cherry tomatoes, and they offer a little sweetness. Their crushed juices also help counteract the relative dryness of the almonds, which, unlike softer pine nuts, refuse to give themselves up to the pesto—they remain distinct and crunchy, adding a wonderful textural interest to the dish that pesto Genovese sometimes lacks. I found that a little pasta water was the essential step to keep it from drying out too much and helping to bind everything together.
What are your favorite non-Genovese pestos?
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Posted by Lucy Baker, April 8, 2008 at 2:00 PM
It's salad season. But I don't mean that in a negative, it's-almost-time-to-put-on-a-bathing-suit kind of way. I mean because the markets are once again full of fresh, vibrant produce, from artichokes and baby beets to radishes and watercress. And because the vegetables are in such abundance, they cost a fraction of what they did all winter. Cheap and delicious—what could be better?
One of my favorite spring veggies has always been asparagus. Whether simply broiled with a drizzle of olive oil and a sprinkling of salt and pepper or showcased in a sophisticated soup (I love Jerry Traunfeld's version with fresh thyme), I just can’t get enough of its sweet, crunchy, herbaceous flavor. For this week's magazine recipe review, I decided to prepare the quinoa salad with asparagus, dates, and orange from the April issue of Cooking Light.
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Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, April 7, 2008 at 4:15 PM
During the time I spent studying abroad in London, I became infatuated with the egg and watercress sandwiches you could buy pre-wrapped at the corner store. I loved how the simple ingredients were transformed into a unique package. Perhaps I loved them so because they were the cheapest possible meal I could find, but I came home with a real hankering for them in all their packaged glory.
I thought it would be easy to recreate them—it’s basically just eggs, mayonnaise, watercress, and bread. I attempted to crack the code a few years back, but something essential was missing and my early interpretations always ended up a tad too creamy and bland. This recipe from Saveur is much better. This recipe spikes that basic mixture with white wine vinegar and mustard, adding a wonderful contrast to the creamy mayo. It’s also advertised as an open-faced sandwich, which allows the watercress to play a more critical roll. But it’s just as good squeezed between two slices of bread.
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Posted by Robin Bellinger, April 7, 2008 at 2:15 PM
As a devoted user of How To Cook Everything
, I’m always interested in bloggers’ strong opinions about Mark Bittman. I haven’t run into any anti-Bittman animus in a while, but every once in a while someone really lets him have it. HTCE and the Minimalist have at times led me astray with recipes that were disappointingly bland or didn’t quite work, but successes have far outnumbered failures.
This week I tried his curried rice noodles in hopes that they would make a good sack lunch. I’m afraid, however, that this is the kind of recipe that makes people turn against Bittman. The noodles were completely bland because the curry powder never really got integrated, and now I have a pot completely encrusted with cooked-on noodles. I probably should have used a bigger (10 quart?) pot and gotten it hotter, but I’m not going to try again to find out; the one thing I demand of his recipes is that they be idiot proof. In the meantime, for your lunch I propose one of my old Bittman favorites, red beans and rice.
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Posted by Gina DePalma, April 7, 2008 at 8:00 AM
Italians have an undeserved reputation for hammering vegetables to a fault, an accusation most often leveled at us by the" tender-crisp" camp. While I agree that cooking vegetables to the point of disintegration can be yucky, I think undercooked veggies are an insult to the vegetal world. Too many fine, deserving vegetables suffer an inconsequential position in a meal by being left in a slightly crisp state of unfulfilled flavor that no sauce can rescue.
Asparagus are the perfect example of a vegetable that needs a good long hammering (ahem) in a hot oven. Sorry, fans of tender-crisp, but I really dislike waterlogged, boiled asparagus, and steaming them renders them equally tasteless. If you don't believe me, bite into a "tender-crisp," steamed asparagus spear—no cheating with mayo, please—and tell me if any fireworks go off.
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Posted by Ed Levine, April 6, 2008 at 8:00 AM
Here's a perfect spring Italian brunch dish from one of my often-used cookbooks, Cucina Simpatica, by George Germon and Joanne Killeen, chef-owners of Al Forno, a wonderful restaurant in Providence, Rhode Island. According to the headnote in the book, "this recipe is an adaptation of the asparagi Bismarck served at Bagutta, a wonderful old restaurant in Milan." I serve it with thick slices of toasted rustic bread brushed with olive oil.
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Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, April 4, 2008 at 4:00 PM
I was quite the picky eater in my youth. I didn’t touch green beans, wouldn’t go near cooked carrots, and never had a salad I liked until junior high. But against all reason and logic, I did love artichokes. From the moment I started eating artichokes, I remember actually enjoying them. Perhaps it’s the activity of picking up off the petals, dipping them in butter, and pulling off the “meat” of the vegetable with my teeth. What fun food to eat!
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Posted by Robin Bellinger, April 4, 2008 at 1:45 PM
Yesterday I was glad that Lucy alerted us to the existence of Totally Baked (something has been done to the Dining Section online, and now I am bad about seeing Food Stuff). Recently I was craving a baked potato on a night when I had no patience for cooking and no potatoes in the house, so I ran out to get one at a Hell’s Kitchen establishment that will remain nameless. It was gummy, hard in the middle, and totally disappointing. Now I have another spot to try.
A well-baked potato with the right toppings offers an amount of pleasure disproportionate to the raw ingredients cost, especially with a green salad on the side. It also involves very little active time and kitchen cleanup. For these reasons it was one of my favorite dinners senior year of college, when I was cooking for myself at a school not really equipped for independent eaters. I knew how to bake potatoes, roast vegetables, steam broccoli, whisk together a vinaigrette, and make beans and rice out of a box. Oh, and heat up a can of soup. It must have been a little monotonous, but in retrospect I think I ate very well.
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Posted by Dorie Greenspan, April 3, 2008 at 11:00 AM
While I have been known to exaggerate now and then, I've never gone overboard in my praise for this lemon cream (think curd); I just call it extraordinary and rest assured that I haven't gone overboard.
The recipe comes from Pierre Hermé, my pastry hero, and I think it's fascinating. It has all of the ingredients you find in a traditional lemon curd, but the way you make it changes the cream's texture—Pierre's lemon cream is tangier, lemonier and, I think, lighter on the tongue, than traditional lemon curd. The secret is in the way the butter is added. In a curd, all the ingredients, including the butter, go into a pot and you cook, cook, cook and stir, stir and stir and then, when the mixture cools, it's curd. With Pierre Herme's lemon cream, you cook and stir everything—except the butter—then, when the ingredients have thickened, you put them into a food processor or blender, let them cool a bit, then whir in the butter and keep whirring. Essentially, you make an emulsion. And, because the butter doesn't melt and re-firm, as it does with curd, the lemon cream is silky, luxurious and yes, extraordinary.
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Posted by Robin Bellinger, April 1, 2008 at 1:00 PM
Yogurt: good for avoiding the unpleasant side effects of pregnancy
I’ve made it to the eighteenth week of pregnancy pretty much unaffected by three phenomena that turn life upside down for many expectant women: morning sickness, food aversions, and cravings. “I feel like I’m cheating!” I told my obstetrician last month. She told to count my lucky stars (and not to mention how great I felt to the other women in the waiting room), but I still felt like a fraud every time my friends and family kindly, concernedly asked how I was doing.
There were about two weeks in January when I had mild morning headaches and afternoon nausea. Instead of disappearing, however, my appetite increased. It was like having a slight hangover, just enough to make you feel a little loopy and put you in the mood for a big brunch; I’d treat it with ginger ale, white rice, peanut butter, and homemade cookies while my med-student husband muttered about gestational diabetes.
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Posted by Blake Royer, March 31, 2008 at 4:00 PM
This might look a lot like a coleslaw recipe, and I'll be the first to say that coleslaw isn't one of my favorite foods. I've had too many disappointing experiences with the stuff in little paper cups, tasting like it had been tossed in Miracle Whip. No disrespect; it's just not my thing.
And yet, this cabbage salad recipe from Pork & Sons—a side dish to the smoked Boston butt—really makes the case for cabbage with mayo. Rather than shredded, the raw cabbage is sliced into wide ribbons, which maintain their crunch under the blanket of silky sauce, a homemade mayonnaise with a piquant handful of cornichons, capers, and shallots. And what a sauce it is—I made extra and have been painting it on bread to make amazing ham sandwiches. Red wine vinegar and mustard provide an appropriately spicy background to balance out the richness. I think of it as French-ified coleslaw.
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Posted by Robin Bellinger, March 31, 2008 at 12:45 PM
You don’t need me to tell you to pack a sandwich for lunch, but lately for some reason I can’t get peanut butter and honey out of my head. Though I’ve been eating it on spelt bread in a gesture towards healthiness, I often dream of eating it on the dreadfully soft white bread we used to use at summer camp.
As a kid and a teenager I spent three weeks every summer in a screen and concrete cabin on the shores of a lake about an hour outside of Austin. The camp cook, Barney, was a little-seen but much-beloved institution. Each cabin was expected to make up a little song and dance in praise of him at least once a week (no joke). We looked forward to certain meals obsessively, but I can remember only a few now: honeybuns for breakfast, chicken fried steak and apple crisp for lunch, and taco salad for dinner. (For some reason out biggest, hottest meal of the day was served at lunchtime, when the temperature usually hovered around 97 degrees. Perhaps the director’s hope was that we would all pass out during the required post-lunch siesta instead of playing pranks on our sleeping counselors.)
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Posted by Blake Royer, March 27, 2008 at 4:00 PM
I recently bought one of those Kyocera plastic mandolines
—the cheap alternative to large French models—and it's changed everything. Never mind that a cell phone company makes it; this thing works. And it makes me look like a fast, skilled cook, especially with winter salad recipes like this one. Making the dressing, which involves dumping everything into a jar and shaking like mad, is the labor-intensive part. Otherwise, I just lazily slide my vegetables over the mandoline's ceramic blade, resulting in beautiful, paper-thin, uniform slices. I toss, serve, and accept the compliments.
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Posted by Blake Royer, March 25, 2008 at 3:45 PM
I've been on the lookout lately for pasta dishes which require no cheese or butter to make them delicious. My girlfriend is off eating dairy for a while, so we've had to get creative. And it's not easy—it seems like ninety percent of pasta recipes finish with "sprinkle freshly grated Parmesan and serve." It's been a good challenge to make the ingredients taste wonderful without the usual shortcuts. I've heard before that vegetarians are more creative in the kitchen, because they have to be—as a current faux-vegan, that seems even more true.
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Posted by Adam Kuban, March 25, 2008 at 1:30 PM
Today's recipe from Nigella Express is for a super easy pappardelle with escarole dish. I've always liked the mixture of a sharp green like escarole along with pasta, and this recipe couldn't be any easier to make than boiling water and doing a little sautéing.
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As is always the case with our Cook the Books, we're giving away a number of them this week. Enter to win Nigella Express »
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Posted by Lucy Baker, March 25, 2008 at 12:30 PM
I've always wanted to try baking a clafouti, the homey French dessert that is part pancake, part pudding, and part custard. But classic clafoutis are made with fresh cherries, and I was deterred by the idea of pitting cup after cup. So when I saw a saw the clafouti recipe in the April issue of Everyday Food that replaced the cherries with dried figs, I knew I had to make it for this week's recipe review.
The clafouti recipe was part of a larger article about a basic, homemade baking mix (6 cups flour, 3 cups sugar, 2 tablespoons baking powder, and 1 tablespoon salt). The total yield is about 9 cups, which is more than enough to make one batch of every recipe in the article: the clafouti, plus oatmeal blondies, jam sandwich cookies, and silver-dollar pancake sundaes.
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Posted by Robin Bellinger, March 25, 2008 at 11:00 AM
Mothers & Menus is a New York City meal delivery service designed for families living through those first few crazy weeks with a new baby. Its founder, Karen Gurwitz, was frustrated after the birth of her first child: she wanted to lose her pregnancy weight, but since she was breastfeeding she worried about cutting out too many calories. Wouldn’t it be great, she thought, if someone else would figure out what she should eat and deliver it to her every morning? Such a service didn’t exist, so she invented it and committed to using whole and organic foods as much as possible.
Mothers & Menus sounds wonderful and flexible. But if it doesn’t fit into your budget (it certainly doesn’t jibe with mine) and you like making your own food (as I do), you might want to take a look instead at Gurwitz’s cookbook, The Well-Rounded Pregnancy Cookbook.
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Posted by Gina DePalma, March 25, 2008 at 8:00 AM
The cluttered and dusty used bookstore on my block has become one of my favorite haunts, mostly for a sometimes campy and ever-revolving selection of old cookbooks. The Myra Breckenridge Cookbook displayed in the window last week made me laugh right out loud, but inside I found an even greater treasure—an old copy of Elizabeth David's Italian Food. It is impossible not to be inspired by David's evocative and vivid writing style, and thumbing through the dog-eared volume while imagining her travels through Italy in the early 1950s has become my new afternoon ritual.
The pages recently fell open to reveal her recipe for Carrots in Marsala; it instantly seemed so mouthwatering I had no choice but to head straight for the market.
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Posted by Robin Bellinger, March 19, 2008 at 2:45 PM
I didn’t discover Indian food until I was 21 and living in New York City for the first time, and I didn’t try cooking it until my husband and I started dating a few years later. His family, he explained, loved this cookbook author called Madhur Jaffrey—had I heard of her? As it happened, I was working for Knopf, her publisher, but had never taken home a copy of her 1973 classic An Invitation to Indian Cooking. Indian cooking seemed forbiddingly complicated, and besides, the current edition of the book was just a little paperback whose cover featured a campy picture of Jaffrey dressed in a sari, smiling benignly over a still life of ingredients despite the fact that we readers seem to have surprised her in the act of chopping cilantro.
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Posted by Robin Bellinger, March 17, 2008 at 1:00 PM
In the fairytales and adventure stories of my childhood, the first thing a character had to do before she embarked on a journey, whether she was a princess or a milkmaid, was pack a small but sustaining bundle of bread and cheese and sausage. Consequently this trio has always seemed very romantic to me, but only recently did it occur to me as a superfast and easy lunch for non-storybook types, too—all shopping, no work.
I would take a hunk of baguette, some rounds of salami, a slice of good cheddar, and an apple. You might prefer ciabatta, mozzarella, prosciutto, and olives. We’re really just talking about a deconstructed sandwich, I suppose, and not a particularly healthy one, but I love the idea of stopping work and really enjoying these few things instead of continuing to type with one hand while the other moves a sandwich from desk to mouth and back again.
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Posted by Ed Levine, March 16, 2008 at 8:00 AM
I've never come across a French toast recipe that I didn't want to try, but I must say that Nigella Lawson's orange French toast recipe sounded particularly yummy. Any old white bread will work fine, but using slices of challah will result in a fluffier, eggier dish.
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Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, March 14, 2008 at 4:00 PM
The fiancée and I have something for sweet potatoes, especially in fry form. We like them fried or baked, crisp or soggy. They are such an odd twist on an old standby, and they work more often than not. So I was quickly sold on this recipe, which presented not only big fat sweet potato fries but an interesting-looking sauce with lots of lime.
I suppose it’s a side dish, but we just dumped the wedges into a large bowl and went at them without any thought of a main course. It might not seem healthy attacking a large greasy stack of French fries, but these are baked, and the yogurt sauce felt light and satisfying. It succeeds because of the play between the pungent, earthy seasonings and the quick, zippy sauce. Either way, it’s another adaptation from Martha. And for that we thank her.
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Posted by Dorie Greenspan, March 13, 2008 at 1:30 PM
Photograph by Alan Richardson
I’m still in Paris (yay!) and while I saw brilliant yellow forsythia when I was at the Sunday market, and while there are a few cherry blossoms out in the gardens that get full sun, it’s been cold and rainy all week—we even had snow for two seconds and a couple of hail showers—which means I’m still making hearty soups and substantial stews, one of which, a daube of red wine and beef cheeks, is simmering in the oven now. Between the chill outside and the breeze that comes through my ancient window frames, I don’t think my friends will find it unwelcome.
The daube will be familiar to my Parisian pals, but its accompaniment won’t—I’m going to serve the stew with a basketful of corn muffins. Of course, I’ll have to use frozen corn, but I can find really good cornmeal here, so it will be fine. And I might add a few herbs and a little bacon to the mix (the bacon here is fabulous), just to make it more savory and because there’s bacon in the daube. The way I see it, adding bacon to the muffins is like pulling an outfit together by wearing a scarf that picks up the color of your shoes. And besides, what isn’t better with bacon?
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Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, March 12, 2008 at 4:00 PM
I didn’t even attempt to take a picture of this monstrosity because I knew no camera angle could make this blackened pile of slosh look anything approaching edible. I’d blame Barbara Kafka if it didn’t taste so remarkable. In her famous Roasting cookbook
, she advocates cooking my gorgeous green cabbage at 500°F, which quickly turns it black. Then it's mixed with the Asian-inspired sauce—also black—and before I could think twice, I was staring into the face of the ugliest dish I’d ever created.
The impetus for the recipe came in the middle of roasting a chicken according to the Kafka method. I had an obscenely hot oven and figured I should find another recipe from her book to toss in. Some cabbage was lying around and everything for the sauce was in the fridge. And while it does disfigure the vegetable beyond all recognition, it also crisps it up and layers it in flavor. Far from weepy and aromatic, it’s rich and complex. I wouldn’t serve this for company, but it is a great side dish.
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Posted by Robyn Lee, March 12, 2008 at 12:00 PM
The following recipe is from the March 12th edition of our weekly recipe newsletter. To receive this newsletter in your inbox, sign up here!
In My Last Supper by Melanie Dunea, 50 of the best-known chefs around the world share the recipes of their final meals. Jamie Oliver chose spaghetti all'arrabiata, a dish of spaghetti in a tomato, chili, garlic and onion sauce he learned in Tuscany and has since become his favorite comfort food.
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Posted by Blake Royer, March 11, 2008 at 4:30 PM
The French may have ratatouille, with its newfound cinematic fame, but they aren't the only ones: a similar stewed vegetable dish can be found in many other cultures from the Phillipines to Turkey to Malta. There is something magical about tomatoes, onions, zucchini, eggplant, and garlic stewed together.
But I say the Spanish are the ones really onto something: namely, the fried egg. I once had this dish in a tapas bar in Madrid and vowed to make it myself someday. It arrived at our table hot and steaming with a fresh, barely crispy fried egg; bread in hand, we dug into the bowl, breaking the yolk and watching it melt into the vegetables. It softened the tomato's acidity and took the dish to new levels of creaminess.
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Posted by Robin Bellinger, March 11, 2008 at 1:00 PM
Finally, happily, I’d like to tell you about something pregnant women can and should eat with no worries. In fact, everyone who is trying to work more whole grains into their diet should try this recipe for wheatberry salad with dried cranberries and fresh herbs, one of the few really craveable whole grain preparations I have discovered. The Dean and DeLuca Cookbook
calls it a side dish, but it also makes an excellent snack for your morning or afternoon slump. Pregnant women in particular are advised to eat many small meals and snacks throughout the day; this kind of grazing is said to help prevent queasiness during the first trimester and simply to be necessary during the hungry third trimester. Expecting or not, you’ll find that having a bowl of this salad in the refrigerator makes it possible for you to skip a trip to the deli for chips (my weakness) and snack without guilt even as you fill those seemingly impossibly high whole grain requirements.
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