Posted by Blake Royer, July 3, 2008 at 4:30 PM
Maybe chili-spiked lamb sausage—better known as Merguez, a north African specialty—isn't the most patriotic thing to grill on July 4th. Your neighbors will be out there with their all-beef patties and Oscar Meyer hot dogs, looking over the fence. But the way I see it, high levels of deliciousness trumps all—and this sandwich passes the test with gusto.
The key is using a good crusty baguette, which also gets charred on the grill, making it taste fresh out of oven all over again. A quick cucumber, onion, and tomato condiment salad adds crunch, and there are two sauces to choose from: harissa, which can be store bought or blended up easily, and cumin-spiked mayonnaise (but call it cumin aioli for more raised eyebrows). The harissa is for spicier palates, while the aioli is a bit milder but still very flavorful.
D'Artagnan makes an excellent merguez sausage which is quite mild; you might also find them at a local farmer's market.
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Posted by Blake Royer, July 1, 2008 at 4:30 PM
While at the market this weekend I picked up a giant handful of garlic scapes, the rather beautiful garlic flower that looks a bit like a pig's tail—they were too inexpensive and attractive to pass up. I knew I wanted them in a pasta, but I didn't know how it would play out. I read about grilling them or treating them like asparagus by chopping into 1-inch lengths and sautéing in butter, but the simplest and post popular scape pasta seemed to be tossed with pesto.
But what would I put in it? In the end, I decided to keep the variables fixed and blend together scapes, pine nuts, Parmesan, and olive oil. I also sweated a little red onion in butter over low heat to develop a sweet oniony base for the pasta, which I hoped would bring out that side of the scape's flavor.
But the resulting dish wasn't all that I'd hoped. The subtle flavor of the pine nuts was lost, and too much oil was required to get the pesto to the right consistency—even then, it was nowhere near as smooth as the basil-based pesto Genovese. The pesto itself had too much hot garlic bite. Maybe I should I have cooked the scapes first, or blended them with an herb to soften the edges? I'm open to suggestions.
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Posted by Joshua Bousel, June 20, 2008 at 11:15 AM
The massive heatwave two weekends ago released my summer urge to head to the beach, and I had a lovely beach excursion all planned out for this past Sunday. I woke that morning to a dreary rainy day, not the beach weather I was expecting. Through my disappointment I decided if I can't get to the beach, I'll bring a part of it to me and headed out to my fish monger to pick up something I could throw on the grill.
While fish is no stranger to my grill, I am admittedly not much of seafood eater, but am on a road to changing this. When looking for a piece of fish to cook, I wanted something hearty, not overly fishy, and that would stand up to being grilled. My fish monger recommended the striped bass as the freshest fish of the day meeting my requirements. I grilled this up with a light rub and topped it with a roasted salsa, working in flavors I really enjoy to put me on track to being a serious seafood eater. Even though I would have preferred this with a fresh, cool salsa (although roasting isn't a bad idea with this salmonella scare we got going), the rub/salsa combination ending up being the perfect compliments for the fish. The spicy rub brought out the taste of grilling, while the acidity of the salsa balanced nicely with the seafood flavor, and the whole thing left me exclaiming, "Why haven't I eaten this more often?!!?!?" Now I've found my anticipation to hit the waves has been replaced by excitement over my next adventure in grilled fish.
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Posted by Lucy Baker, June 11, 2008 at 12:00 PM
The following recipe is from the June 11th edition of our weekly recipe newsletter. To receive this newsletter in your inbox, sign up here!
Making mayonnaise at home is as simple as whirring a few ingredients in a food processor, and the results are far more flavorful than anything jarred or store-bought. In New South Grilling, renowned chef and author Robert St. John offers up this recipe for homemade avocado mayonnaise. Try it as a topper on all your summer sandwiches.
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Posted by Robin Bellinger, May 27, 2008 at 1:45 PM
I am not accustomed to being wary of food. My working assumption is that when I eat something in a restaurant it may, by accident or design, contain gross things that I don’t want to know about, but that I will survive. I know exactly how clean my kitchen floor is, but I choose to heed the five-second rule instead of this knowledge. Raw eggs, rare meat, venerable leftovers that still smell pretty much okay—none of these things has ever given me pause until now.
Before, the worst thing that could happen was a bout of food poisoning. Now I worry about harming my growing baby and reluctantly reverse course when I automatically lift a chunk of raw cookie dough to my mouth. Although I’m all for not taking worrying to extremes, recently baby did not kick for more than a day, and it was scary. She’s active again now, thank goodness, but it was horrible to wonder if something I did had hurt her. Because I haven’t been perfect.
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Posted by Ed Levine, May 25, 2008 at 12:00 PM
This week's Cartoon Kitchen features Serious Eats' cartoonist in residence Larry Gonick's spin on caponata. —Ed Levine
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Posted by Lucy Baker, May 20, 2008 at 3:15 PM
Here is what I learned while cooking this week's Magazine Recipe Review: when life gives you so-so guacamole, make Chilled Avocado Soup with Crab.
When you live in a city, as I do, the summer issues of food magazines can get a little depressing—all those articles on backyard barbecues and beach side clam bakes. I'm lucky enough my front stoop faces the sun; forget having the outdoor space for a souped-up grill, or even a tiny hibachi.
After enviously eying all the recipes in the June issue of Food & Wine for homemade barbecue sauce and grilled steaks, not to mention Jean-Georges' Spit-Roasted Suckling Pig, I decided to make the Guacamole with Charred Jalapeño and Scallions.
I don’t even have a grill pan, so using author Grace Parisi's tip for a "brighter, crunchier guacamole," I skipped the charring step and stirred in the jalapeño, scallions, and garlic raw. The recipe came together in under five minutes, and while it was perfectly creamy and lime-y, it was also somehow lacking. Perhaps it needed some chopped tomatoes, or a dash or two of cumin?
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Posted by Robin Bellinger, May 16, 2008 at 1:15 PM
Sometimes I recall that I grew up without hummus and am amazed. It seems like such a natural kid-food, but it just wasn’t around in Houston then (now it is—my childhood, we’re talking decades ago now, people). I discovered hummus in my Yankee college town, at a little bakery that slathered it on a large, soft pita and wrapped it up with sliced tomatoes and onions. It dripped all over the place but was heavenly, especially during finals when one’s brain couldn’t be expected to function on dining-hall fare alone.
As a single girl in Manhattan, I had to be careful about buying hummus because I could eat a whole container over the course of an idle afternoon. What began as a little snack would end up a crime scene featuring me splayed out on the sofa with a magazine, eyeing an empty plastic tub and a half-full bag of baby carrots with horror: what have I done? My Lebanese friend warned me that hummus was full of fat. My Israeli friend taught me which brands would do (Sabra) and which would not (all the other ones) and convinced me to buy a vat of tahini. I learned some (some) self-control and self-sufficiency, and now I make my own hummus.
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Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, May 7, 2008 at 4:30 PM
You’ll definitely have some leftover pesto if you make this whole recipe, but that’s kind of the point. Pesto freezes remarkably well, and can be thawed in moments. Since I had made a large batch a week before, I was able to throw this meal together in approximately 10 minutes. Sure, my fish flaked apart into a hundred pieces when I tried to flip it, creating one of the uglier meals I’ve had in ages (that’s why there is no photo), but it was tasty.
I picked this from Jamie Oliver’s Jamie’s Dinners: The Essential Family Cookbook. And it’s not really a recipe as much of a technique. Have pesto? Jamie provides seven other simple meals to throw it on top of. That includes roast chicken, mussels, bruschetta, and grilled vegetables. I was feeling like fish. And the pesto certainly livens up the white fish, giving it an automatic freshness without much work at all.
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Posted by Raphael, May 6, 2008 at 8:30 AM
Dirty, dirty ramps.
Ramps are only in season for about a month or two, but there are a few ways to preserve them so you can enjoy their flavor all year long. My favorite long-term preservation technique is making ramp compound butter and storing it in the freezer. The ramps, locked inside the confines of the frozen butter like Han Solo in carbonite, are essentially stored indefinitely, capturing the "rampy" essence of early spring at any time of year.
The most common compound butter is beurre maitre d'hotel, or hotel butter, composed of shallots, garlic, fines herbes, lemon zest, salt, and pepper; the recipe that follows is a variation on this theme. Generally used for broiled or grilled meats or fish, hotel butter functions as a sort of flavor-inducing sauce. You may find a slice of it sitting, slowly melting, on top of a steak in your steak frites.
Ramp compound butter is great in a pinch, as you can easily pull a log out of the freezer and cut off a slice or two. It's especially good on pasta, in a risotto, or—my preference—tucked underneath the breast skin of a chicken. If you can keep it until fall, it works great under the skin of a Thanksgiving turkey. Don't delay—ramp season is short and is almost over.
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Posted by Lucy Baker, April 23, 2008 at 12:45 PM
Don't be put off by the long list of ingredients in today's Cook the Book recipe for Grilled Lamb with Salsa Verde, excerpted from the soon-to-be-released Oprah Magazine Cookbook. The lamb marinade is best prepared the night before, and in a pinch, the salsa verde can be made ahead, too. Plus, all those fresh herbs—rosemary, marjoram, tyme, mint, and parsley—lend phenomenal flavor. Not to mention the capers, anchovies, and feta cheese. What better way to celebrate a warm spring evening than with a backyard dinner of tender skewered lamb?
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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 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 Nick Kindelsperger, February 29, 2008 at 4:30 PM
It might have a plain-jane name, but the authors of the Cafe Flora Cookbook
know what’s up: “Our inspiration for this dressing was—dare I say it?—ranch dressing! But we gussied it up a bit.” Besides the mayonnaise there isn’t much that is similar between the two, but it somehow does manage to remind me of that classic. It is probably because of the body, though I expect I will actually use this version on a regular basis. Why? Well it’s tangier, more complex, and doesn’t taste like it’s immediately clogging my arteries.
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Posted by Jamie Forrest, February 1, 2008 at 11:00 AM
Try out this blue cheese dip recipe after reading my associated post: The Best Blue Cheese For the Ultimate Super Bowl Blue Cheese Dip.
The Ultimate Super Bowl Blue Cheese Dip
Adapted from Saveur, Issue #31
- makes about 2 cups -
Ingredients
8 oz. cream cheese
1/2 c. heavy cream
1/2 c. sour cream (or a strained yogurt like Labneh)
1/4 lb. Mountain Gorgonzola (a.k.a. Naturale), or other cow's milk blue
2 scallions, finely chopped
Procedure
Gently beat together the cream cheese, the heavy cream, and the sour cream. (I used a food processor, but only pulsed it briefly; you could probably also use an electric mixer on a slow speed.) Add the crumbled cheese and the scallions and stir to mix, making sure to keep some of the crumbles intact.
Posted by Robyn Lee, January 31, 2008 at 3:45 PM
This salsa picante is a homemade version of Pace Foods founder David Pace's famous picante sauce. The key ingredient is chopped fresh jalapeños with the seeds. This salsa may be used as a chip dip, taco sauce, or when heated used to substitute Spanish sauce or ranchero sauce. And, who knows, you could even serve it with other Super Bowl snacks this Sunday.
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