super belated thanksgiving: perfect apple pie, bacon brussel sprouts with mustard vinaigrette, spinach and onion quiche, and DEEP FRIED TURKEY

Where do I even start? That is a photo of one of the three and a half Thanksgiving dinners that I enjoyed last year. The first two Thanksgivings were hosted by friends of mine, and both dinner parties went all out: turkey, stuffing, gravy... the works! I contributed some delicious butternut squash to both meals, which were, coincidentally, both hosted in Astoria.

fried egg with cheddar, scallion, spinach and duck prosciutto/goat cheese, duck prosciutto and arugula sandwich

So in my last post I mentioned the duck prosciutto that I bought at the Union Square Farmer's Market. It was some amazing stuff. I usually just sliced it up and ate it for a snack, but I also added it to a couple of sandwiches, which was always pretty sweet.

It also makes an AWESOME bacon alternative, fried ever so quickly here and served with a little sauteed spinach and a fried egg topped with cheddar and scallions. No meal should be allowed to look AND taste this good. Just a winner on all counts.

eggs poached in buttery sorrel sauce with goat cheese, duck prosciutto and chive blossoms

This dish came together around sorrel. I had never tried it, but a couple of recipes expounding its peppery, lemony tasting virtues had caught my eye, so when I saw a little bunch of it on a lunchtime trip to the farmer's market, I snapped it up in excitement.

In general, it was a particularly successful and inspiring trip to the market. In addition to the sorrel, I got some amazing duck prosciutto, fresh goat cheese, a couple of crusty rolls and some beautiful purple chive blossoms, which I actually got for free. They were being sold attached to the chives, but a number of the flowers had fallen off, so I asked if I could just buy some of the spare blossoms and they kindly threw them in with the sorrel for no extra cost.

a tale of two carbonaras

I think if my first year of blogging taught me anything, it is that I really, really, REALLY like carbonara. I wrote about no less than FOUR different versions of the dish last year. Clearly we are talking about some serious carbonara love here.

There was my father's go-to recipe passed down from my Nona, a fancy version inspired by Joel Robouchon, one with basil and sweet corn and one with Japanese flair. These were all delicious in their own way, which only served to strengthen my appetite for carbonaras of all shapes and sizes, so to speak. As we had made my family's version, Nathan insisted we make his mom's recipe, which I believe she had gotten from a professor while she was in graduate school in Berkeley. I was, of course, more than happy to give it a try, provided I got a second chance to make mine.



Here we have the two dishes side by side. Nathan's is on the left, and if you look closely you can see it is just chock full of bacon, using about twice as much as I usually do. Mine is on the right, and the addition of non-traditional cream renders it noticeably creamier. Nathan's has onions, and mine has garlic, but they are still pretty similar to one another. I'd be happy to eat either version any day of the week, but I have to admit that I'm still slightly partial to the one I grew up with, and I'm sure Nathan feels the same.




I also have the recipes as written by my dad, Carl, and Nathan's mom, Tenli. I thought it would be fun to do a side by side of the recipes in their own words.

Tenli's Carbonara

For a pound of spaghetti or other pasta, approx 12 oz bacon or pancetta, diced fairly small.
1 medium onion, diced
1 large egg
freshly grated parmesan cheese
freshly grated pepper

Cook bacon in the bottom of a large saucepan until it starts to become crispy.
Add the onions and brown them in the bacon fat (mmm) until they are dark and caramelized. Keep an eye on things so the bacon and onions don't burn, as the grease will be very hot.

Meanwhile, cook the pasta (al dente, of course) and beat the egg lightly. When the pasta is ready, drain, and add to the saucepan with the bacon mixture, pour the egg in, and toss the whole thing well. Grate pepper over it to taste, and serve w/parmesan.



The Cascone's Carbonara

(1 or 2 servings)
– cut up bacon (¼ LB) – saute with (lots of garlic
– in bowl beat 1 egg with ~ 4 tbs milk/cream
– over cooked spaghetti – combine bacon (& some bacon oil) with egg and grated cheese and minced parsley
– [reserve some spaghetti water is too dry]




As you can see, the apple doesn't fall from the tree. I get my improvisational cooking style from my father, who probably got his from my Nona, the amazing cook behind this "recipe." With improvisation also comes the inability to describe my cooking process in any great detail. I think this recipe is written for a half pound of pasta? But I just asked my dad and he says that a half pound of bacon would be a lot for a pound of pasta, so who really knows. I think the main difference between the two recipes is really that my dad uses way way less bacon. Obviously, I freaking love bacon, but I think a little goes a long way.

Luckily, with a dish like this it is easy to get great results, even if you have to wing it a little bit. I think I've given you a number of excellent ways to make carbonara that you can really play around with. There's any number of ways to make this dish your own, and I hope you won't feel constrained by traditionalist recipes. I'd love to get my hands on some real guanciale and recreate the original Roman dish, but I'll never turn down a chance to try a new and creative variation, and I hope you won't either.

brunch for the girls

I can't believe I haven't blogged about this, one of my finest culinary moments of the year to date. Of course, I can hardly claim all the credit, as this was totally a joint effort. Back around Valentine's Day, Laura and hosted a brunch for a bunch of our girlfriends with a bunch of pink, sweet, girly food. In honor of Ms Leslie Knope, who provided the inspiration, I called it Galentine's Day. Don't you just love a cheesy portmanteau?



Now isn't that a picture perfect table? Do you like how I stuffed vases with tissue paper that I've saved rather than buying myself roses? You do? Yeah I thought it was pretty clever too.

And what do you see on that festive little table? A plethora of delicious treats! You can see that I made some chocolate covered strawberries, the Glazer girls brought those festively attired ginger muffins with the heart toothpicks, and Hannah brought a crazy good pound cake seen on the left. I think it had honey in it. The plate in the back is of cookies that DiDomenico brought, and the little green and white bag was full of coconut macaroons from Effie. Laura and I always have such generous guests.



This dish was our main course, a hearty savory breakfast dish to balance out all the sugar and sweetness to come. Eggs baked with onions, bacon, eggs, goat cheese and shredded beets, this was intentionally similar to the baked egg casserole I made for our marathon brunch. I made it with beets instead of squash partially because we always get beets from the food co-op, and they are always the last thing that we end up cooking, but also partially because I thought the pink beets would be appropriately festive.



Aside from the eggs, Laura came up with and prepared most of our menu when she found a great article about hosting a tea in the New York Times. The author's suggestion was to have a nice refined tea party in lieu of partaking in the Super Bowl festivities. Now, I'm all for tea parties and girly things, (although I actually quite dislike tea, the accoutrements are great), but I love me some organized sports as well, so we watched the game and hosted brunch/tea the next weekend.



Laura made these delightful tea sandwiches with an herb caper lemon butter, cucumber and radishes. So elegant.



We teamed up to make whole wheat crumpets with blood orange and meyer lemon marmalade and clotted cream. I bough special heart shaped cookie cutters because I am super adorable.



The "clotted cream" was a delicious and super easy mix of mascarpone and heavy cream, whipped together. Very rich, and very tasty, as were the crumpets, but the sweet and tangy marmalade was easily the best part, in large part because it's one of those things where you're just like "Wow, I can make that myself?!"



Finishing out the meal were these champagne floats with homemade strawberry ice cream. And then we watched Sleepless in Seattle. Does it get any more delightfully girly than that?

marathon brunch

Well it's been over a month since my last entry! And in that time we've celebrated the start to a new year, and this blog's first anniversary! Boy does time fly. I have some hopes for the blog in the New Year, mostly regarding improved photography and a real design and logo, but for now I have a lot of cooking to catch up on.

The first order of business is an epic brunch meal. My friends don't generally congregate before noon, but back in November Laura and I hosted our first brunch. It started at 10 am, and surprisingly enough people were pretty much on time. This wasn't just any old brunch– this brunch was kind of a big deal. You see, even though 5th Avenue is basically a dead end street when you live as far north as I do, there is one day a year where my quiet block becomes part of something big. The first Sunday of November, my block happens to be on the route of the New York City Marathon. The last 5 miles of the race run down 5th Avenue and through Central Park. I live just across the Madison Avenue Bridge at 138th St, which marks the runners' triumphant re-entrance to Manhattan after a brief Bronx interlude.

I had never really given the marathon a second thought until last year, when I went and cheered along 1st ave with my good friend Mary, who was making a rare visit to the city from Long Island. We had tons of fun watching the race, so when I realized that I now lived on the route, Laura and I decided to celebrate the athleticism and dedications of all those runners by inviting my friends over for a super gluttonous and boozy brunch. Awesome!

Laura and I woke up bright and early to shop and cook. Even Nathan rolled out of bed in time to help out– without any poking or prodding on my part, which was pretty amazing. As a result, I was actually mostly done with the preparations by the time everyone else arrived, which was quite a relief. We put together quite a spread with a minimal amount of work!

The Menu:
Baked Eggs with Butternut Squash, Bacon and Collard Greens
Baked French Toast, (discussed in my second blog post ever!)
Deviled Eggs (by Nathan)
Apple Tart Tatin (by Laura)
Sweet Potato Pumpkin Ice Cream
Pillsbury Cinnamon Rolls (by the Pillsbury Dough Boy)
With:
Spinach Quiche (by Grace)
Cream Cheese Cinnamon Pumpkin Dip with Gingersnaps (by Jess)
Irish Soda Bread (by Hannah)
Bagels and Cream Cheese (from Paul and his roommate)
Mimosas (from Marc)

If I've forgotten anything, I apologize. I really should blog these things sooner. But anyway, it was a lot of fun. The marathon is awesome. You really wouldn't think that it'd be particularly cool, watching people run, but the runners really seem to appreciate the cheers, and as the race goes on there are people of all shapes and sizes. It's really an exciting atmosphere!

Of course, we had to eat all that food, so we ended up watching most of the race on tv, and running down to the street briefly to watch the leaders come by. After gorging ourselves for several hours, we went back downstairs to cheer on a steady stream of runners. At this point, there were all sorts of national flags and costumes, so it was easy to call out to specific runners, hopefully giving them a little extra boost of confidence.

And as for the food, it was all pretty fabulous. We started off with some quick cinnamon rolls courtesy of Pillsbury, and Nathan's deviled eggs. He blended the yolks with mayo, mustard, a little vinegar and paprika. I think he would have eaten all of them himself, but he managed to exercise some manly restraint. I had a couple and they were just delicious.


deviled eggs

Meanwhile, I woke up really early to start on a baked eggs dish. It's not really brunch if there's no eggs, but I didn't feel like I could handle omelets or fried eggs for a large group. Baked eggs are great because you don't have to flip them individually or stir them around or anything. You can just bake a whole mess of them until the whites set, which takes about 15 minutes. I'd wanted to use my little ramekins, but I more guests than dishes, so I decided to use my pyrex baking dish. Not as cute, but more practical.

I've seen a ton of different recipes for baked eggs, incorporating all sorts of different ingredients, all of which sounded delicious, but I didn't make any of them. My food co-op had saddled me with butternut squash and collard greens, so I came up with my own variation that combined those ingredients with bacon, onions and mozzarella and cheddar cheese. Nathan doesn't like butternut squash, so I made a separate portion for him which substituted chopped tomatoes. Both versions were delicious.


baked eggs with butternut squash, bacon, collard greens and two types of cheese

The night before I cut my squash in half and roasted it in the oven until it was cooked through. The next morning, I peeled and cubed the squash. Then I chopped up some bacon and crisped it up on the griddle. Once that was nice and brown, I set it aside and threw some diced onion onto the pan. I let that soften for a couple of minutes, and then added a huge bunch of finely chopped collard greens. Spinach, chard or kale would work well also. Once that was all wilted, I mixed the bacon, collards, onions and squash together in my large Pyrex dish. I also added some small cubes of mozzarella and cheddar cheese and went to town with the pepper mill.

At this point, you are ready to add your eggs. Everything should be spread evenly in your pan, so you can use a spoon to create small divots to crack the eggs into. I think I may have poured a little milk or cream into the pan to make sure the greens wouldn't dry out in the oven, but that's optional. Bake at 350˚ for 15 to 20 minutes, or until the whites have set. I erred on the side of caution, and wound up with yolks that were beginning to solidify, so if you like yours runny, 15 minutes is probably better.

The great thing about this dish is that it can be prepared ahead of time. Your guests get all the eggy goodness they associate with brunch, but you're not slaving over the stove, flipping omelets. The oven does all the work for you!

The meal's real showstopper was an awesome tart tatin, made mostly by Laura. I oversaw the end of the process, which involves caramelizing the apples with deeply browned butter and sugar in a cast iron skillet, and then baking it with a pie crust on top. It takes a while to peel the apples and to make it all caramelly enough, but other than that it's pretty easy. It's gooey and sweet, and a great dessert that was gobbled up even after we'd consumed piles of eggs and bread and quiche. Yum.


apple tart tatin

I served the tart with some sweet potato pumpkin gingersnap ice cream. I adapted the recipe from The Perfect Scoop, and it was quite good. I've talked quite enough in this entry, so I'll just leave you with the recipe. Enjoy!

Sweet Potato Pumpkin Ice Cream with Gingersnaps
adapted from The Perfect Scoop by David Lebovitz

1 large sweet potato
1¼ cup pureed pumpkin
1 cup plus 2 tbsp whole milk
⅔ cup packed light brown sugar
¼ tsp cinnamon
2 tbsp vanilla bean rum
pinch of salt
1 cup of crumbled gingersnaps

Use a fork to poke holes around the sweet potato, then wrap in aluminum foil and baked in the oven at 400˚ for 45 minutes or until soft. Let cool to room temperature.

Pour the milk into a blender and add the brown sugar, sweet potato, cinnamon, rum and salt. Puree until very smooth, at least 30 seconds. If desired, press the mixture through a mesh strainer, using a flexible rubber spatula.

Chill the mixture thoroughly in the refrigerator, then freeze it in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer's instructions. During the last few minutes of churning, add the crushed gingersnaps.

tortilla espanola

spanish potato and egg omelet

So check this out. Tortilla espanola, prepared in my very own kitchen by a real life Spaniard!

My roommate Laura spent junior year abroad in Spain. After we graduated, we found a place in the Bronx, but I didn't want to move in until I had found a job, so Laura needed to find someone to sublet my room for the summer. Conveniently, Laura's Spanish host family happened to put her in touch with a friend of theirs who was in New York for a few months. Katia was about to start college, and was in the US for the first time, hoping to improve her English. She was working as an au pair, but the family she was with spoke mainly Russian and she was very unhappy with them. In other words, Laura and Katia were a perfect fit.

The two of them hung out all summer, and Laura showed her all around our old neighborhood in the Bronx. Katia revealed that her guidebook told her to stay out of the borough in general. Even though I was living on Long Island at the time, I was able to spend time with the two of them whenever I was in the city that summer, which was pretty much as often as I could afford. We always had a lot of fun. Fordham had a pitiful number of foreign students, and I really only met other Americans when I studied briefly in Italy, so it was very cool to hang out with the genuine European article. Katia went home after September was over, but for that brief summer, she was an important part of our post-collegiate circle of friends.

Last month, Katia was back in New York for the first time in over two years. She came over our apartment for dinner, bringing a massive and delicious block of Manchego cheese, and her boyfriend Sergio, who cooked us this impressive tortilla espanola.

Laura, Sergio and Katia cheerfully chattered away in Spanish. In response, I lamely offered a word or two like "manana" or "necessito," generally butchering the language. (I took 8 years of Spanish, so I know how pathetic that is.) Sergio expertly sliced the cheese, spreading it with strawberry jam. Laura chopped up the potatoes and Sergio fried them until crisp in a skillet full of vegetable oil. He scrambled the eggs and then cooked them with the potatoes like a big omelet. Expertly, Sergio flipped the skillet over and the egg potato mixture out onto a plate, so he could slide the uncooked side back into the pan. It turned out perfectly golden brown and cooked all the way through. Just beautiful.

I was very impressed with this little slice of Spain being served up in Harlem, but Sergio was very critical of his work. He found the tortilla to be bland, since he had neglected to season it. I offered to bring in the salt shaker, but he urged me not to, because he thought it was too late to add salt. If I salted the dish at the table, the salt would merely coat the food, remaining a separate element instead of permeating the eggs and potatoes as they cooked. Regardless of the salt issue, I thought it was pretty good, and watching him cook for us was so cool– like the Spanish version of that Take Home Chef show!

Having Sergio and Katia visit us reminded me just how much I love Spanish food, and how little I know about cooking it. Hopefully I will branch out in that direction soon, because I don't anticipate friendly foreigners coming over to make me dinner again anytime soon!

bread salad: the good and the bad

I really only started cooking after I had my own kitchen and couldn't rely on my parents or the caf to feed me. I knew my way around the kitchen from helping out my parents, but until the summer after my junior year, it wasn't a place that I chose to spend much time in. That June, I found myself cooking for ten on a service trip to New Orleans, when no one else seemed comfortable stepping up to the plate. With very limited resources and absolutely no recipes, I somehow managed to make something that everyone ate without complaint. I wouldn't call that dinner a triumph, but I would say that it kindled something deep inside me. Bolstered by that success, I began to feel drawn to the kitchen.

After my trip to New Orleans, I went to Europe for two months. Obviously, food was a big part of that trip, and I didn't have to prepare most of it. Traveling with friends through Britain, Spain and France, there was always another restaurant, another sandwich shop, another gelato shop. When we finally got to Italy, Mike, Marianne and I stayed in a small apartment with a tiny little stove in Cinque Terra. One night we bought pasta and lots of fresh veggies in the town of Riomaggiore, and I cooked dinner. It was just a simple pasta dish, but I got a real thrill out of making something tasty from quality ingredients.

From Cinque Terra, we went to Pisa and to Rome, and then we went our separate ways– Marianne back to New York, Mike to Albania, and I to Florence. There, I had an apartment with five other American girls for a month. It was a fifth floor walkup, but there were three bedrooms, a tiny living room, a rooftop balcony with a view of the Duomo (*sigh*), and a pretty nice kitchen. Obviously, I ate out a great deal in Florence, but I also went shopping at the San Lorenzo Market and started making myself dinner.

I probably only cooked three or four times while I was in that apartment, but it was always kind of fun and exciting, even if the results weren't that spectacular. I remember making a great pasta dish with onions and cannellini beans, and calling up my Nona to get her recipe for pasta in ricotta cheese sauce. Again, nothing super fancy, but I got quite a sense of accomplishment from throwing those dishes together without a recipe.

Of course, after a while I felt like making something more traditionally Florentine. I don't remember where, but I did find a recipe for a bread salad called panzanella that Italian peasants made with their stale bread. I had lots of stale bread, and it seemed easy, so I decided to whip up a batch of panzanella.


soggy panzenella

Unfortunately, it was soggy and bland, and a total disappointment. I figured I must have done something very wrong. I was a novice cook, and I didn't think it was possible that I could be so unimpressed with traditional Italian food. I love me some peasant food, so this mushy mess just couldn't be right– could it?

Well last month I gave panzanella another shot, and let me tell you the result was exactly the same. Totally bland, even loaded up with basil, garlic, roasted red pepper, tomatoes and sauteed spinach. The bread, though toasted absorbed all the moisture from the veggies, turning the salad into a cold, wet, unappetizing pile of sludge.

Basically, I don't know why this dish hasn't been put out to pasture. Panzanella is just not good. Luckily, I have an alternative for you that is way better.


it's not panzanella– it's way better

Though this dish has a lot of the same ingredients as panzanella, it manages to avoid getting soggy and gross. I cubed the day old bread, but instead of toasting it, I melted some butter in a cast iron skillet, and then tossed in the bread. I let it sit until it got really crispy, and almost burned. Then I stirred all the bread around, letting it soak up all that butter goodness. Almost saturated with butter, the bread stayed crispy on the outside, even when I mixed it with sauteed arugula and pan fried tomatoes. I threw all that on a plate and topped it with some goat cheese, plenty of cracked black pepper and a fried egg.


toasty buttery bread with goat cheese, pan-fried tomatoes and wilted arugula

Now that's what I call a delicious bread salad.

epic BLT

What do you think this might be for?



Oh that's right, it's a big, greasy BLT, loaded with so many toppings that you have to eat it with a knife and fork.



I wanted to make a BLT with my food co-op tomatoes, and I also wanted to use some avocado. California must have had quite a bumper crop this summer, because even here in New York they were unusually cheap and delicious this year.

I don't know why I even bothered to google making a BLT, but I am glad that I did, because Thomas Keller's recipe gave me the brilliant idea of adding melted cheese and a fried egg. Leave it to a world class chef to come up with a bacon egg and cheese/BLT/grilled cheese combo. An unholy alliance of all things fatty and delicious, this was one epic sandwich.



I may not be a world class chef, but I have to say that I think I did Keller one better with the addition of avocado. And in a further stroke of genius, I also tossed on some caramelized onions. If I had had time, I would have even made the mayonnaise from scratch, but Hellman's did just fine.



I think it's safe to say that there's not much you could do to make this sandwich more delicious, and making this during the day allowed me to get actual good photos with natural light! Imagine that!



Yeah, that's the money shot.

breakfast!

Last weekend I made breakfast for Nathan and me:


a decadent breakfast

A poached egg with creamed swiss chard, half a toasted kaiser roll, and some steak. It was pretty filling and delicious. I had put all my half and half in my sad, watery corn soup, so I actually used some of that to cream my chard. It worked just fine, although I ended up adding just a little more than I probably should have. You can see the sauce pooling out underneath the chard in the photo.

Man, I love chard. This new food co-op has only given us chard twice all summer, which is sad and shockingly infrequent. I love the brightly colored ribs. I have a great method for cooking them that I'd love to share with you all, so I hope I get more chard soon!

egg salad is not boring

I feel kind of silly blogging this, but honestly, if I'm feeling lazy and am out of leftovers and all I have in the fridge is a carton of eggs, egg salad sandwiches are my lunchtime savior. Boil two eggs until just shy of hard, (I like the yolks to be solid, but softer and more orange than the traditional hard boiled egg), chop them up and toss with mayo and whatever mix ins you please. It's easy, fast, and bound to please.

Generally, I like to saute a little minced garlic in oil to add to my egg salad. This shouldn't surprise you. I also like to put in finely chopped onions and celery, because a good egg salad has to have a little crunch. (When we made that carbonara and overcooked our eggs, Nathan made an egg salad without a more toothsome component, and it was like eating baby food.) I also like to have some chopped parsley in there, for color. I once had a giant bunch of fresh dill that I was struggling to use up, and that was an awesome add in, bringing a huge burst of flavor. I season generously with salt and pepper, and add just enough mayo to make it all stick together.


egg salad sandwich with celery and radish

This egg salad in particular could have used a bit more punch– I didn't add the onions or garlic, partially out of laziness and partially because my previous attempt at this dish had given me a particularly bad case of dragon breath. What I did add was tiny, crunchy little bits of radish, in addition to the requisite celery. I mainly did this because I thought a pop of red would look really nice, but having the pepperyness of the radish did help make it less bland without the garlic and onions.

You could also add mustard to your egg salad for added flavor and to cut back on the mayo. You could make it spicy with paprika or chili powder, or toss in some pickles to add some acid. You can switch out the onion for scallions or sub in red onion or garlic scapes or shallot. Bacon and egg salad is also a great combo, but I wouldn't do that if I wasn't planning to eat my sandwich right away. No one likes soggy bacon. Anyway, my point is that there's a lot of room to be creative here. Just keep in mind these three rules:

1. season, season, season! and don't forget the onion!
2. don't forget the crunch, or it's just mush in your mouth
3. you need some sort of binder, like mayo, to make it come together

Otherwise, enjoy!

farmers' market sandwich creation

sandwich with both parts of the radish

I don't know if you've noticed, but I tend to improvise a lot in the kitchen. That's why you won't find a lot of recipes in my posts, but rather more free form explanations of what I've been up to in the kitchen. This might be frustrating if you're not super comfortable in the kitchen and you are looking for more exact instructions on how to replicate our meals at home, but I do always link to the recipes that were my jumping off point, so hopefully this isn't too much of a problem.

Anyway, my point is that even though I don't worry too much about following a recipe exactly, I almost have one (or two), that I am using as a guide. Therefore, when I come up with a dish entirely on my own, it is kind of thrilling, even if it is only a simple sandwich, like the one I am going to talk about today.

Going on three weeks ago now, back when Nathan and I were still doing our Master Meals series, he suggested I swing by the Union Square Market on Saturday afternoon so we could make Jonathan Waxman's famous chicken on Wednesday. I thought this was a good idea, but by the time I got down there, the chicken vendors were gone, and we never did get around to making more Master Meals.

What I did make was this delicious sandwich, inspired by the bounty of the late spring farmers' market:


fried eggs and goat cheese atop radishes

Thin-as-I-could-slice-'em radishes, creamy salted goat cheese, a runny fried egg and sauteed radish tops atop a crusty roll. All freshly bought down in Union Square and prepared with a minimum of heat and thus ideal for a hot summer day. What was especially great about this light little meal was that it all kind of came together in my head organically, (no pun intended), as I wandered the market.

"A huge bunch of radishes for a dollar? Those would be great marinated with oil and vinegar, salt and pepper and served on some buttered bread, and I can cook the greens up with some lemon juice. But how can I make this more of a full meal? Eggs for $2.25 a dozen? Oh, a HALF dozen? Expensive, but now I want to make egg sandwiches, so let's just go for it... Oh look! They are closing up for the night so a bag of four rolls is only two bucks! Anything else? There's goat cheese. I love goat cheese. Four ounces for $5. Great!"

This all came together brilliantly. The radish slices gave it crunch, and the buttery bread and runny eggs richness. Nathan made the astute observation that the lemon in the greens mixed with the egg yolk made it taste a bit like hollandaise sauce, and the goat cheese was the perfect creamy, last minute addition. These sandwiches were so good, I'm even going to write up my approximations of a formal recipe so those of you playing along at home can make this yourselves. So, without further ado:

"The Garlicus Maximus" – Whole Radish Sandwiches on Garlic Bread with Goat Cheese and a Fried Egg
makes 2 sandwiches

the green tops from a large bunch of radishes
2-3 medium to large sized radishes
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp red wine vinegar
kosher salt
freshly ground pepper
½ a lemon, juiced
½ a stick butter at room temperature, plus extra for frying eggs
2 cloves garlic
1½ tbsp goat cheese
2 rolls

1. Wash the radishes, removing the greens and setting them aside. Slice the radishes as thin as you can. (I don't have a mandolin, but I imagine it would be helpful in this situation.)
2. Mix the olive oil and vinegar in a small bowl and add the sliced radishes and a generous amount of salt and pepper. Let marinate while you make the rest of the sandwich.
3. Smash the garlic cloves into a paste. You can use a mortar and pestle to do this, or you can scrape the clove with the side of your paring knife. Mix the garlic into the softened butter.
4. Slice your rolls in half and spread the garlic butter on both sides. Toast in the oven or toaster oven until golden brown.
5. Saute the radish greens until wilted over medium low heat in a frying pan. They should still be wet from when you washed them, which will prevent them from burning in the hot pan, but you can heat up a little oil or butter before you add the greens. Add lemon juice and season with salt and pepper.
6. Fry two eggs and season with salt and pepper.
7. Assemble the sandwiches. Layer the thinly slice radishes on one half of the sandwich, and the lemony greens on the other. Pour a little of the left over vinegar and oil mixture over the sliced radishes. Spread a goat cheese over the radish slices, and top the greens with the eggs. Crack a little black pepper onto the cheese. Fold to close, and enjoy.


soon to be devoured sandwich

PS: If you are, in fact, playing along at home, or even just reading along, drop us a line. I'd love to hear how our recipes turn out back in your kitchen, and it's great to get feedback. Kthxbye.

fancy carbonara

A traditional carbonara is made with spaghetti, eggs, pecorino romano cheese, guanciale and cracked black pepper. Of course, you are probably used to a carbonara with bacon or pancetta, since guanciale, or cured pork cheek, is hard to find outside of Italy, except at specialty stores. You also might expect to find some garlic or parsley or maybe even onions thrown in there, and you're probably used to a carbonara sauce thickened with cream or half and half. You might not even think twice about using parmesan in lieu of romano (although having recently attempted such a substitution for the first time, I urge you not to). Although your conception of carbonara might deviate from the original dish first served in Rome, you'd expect most people to agree that both feature the same flavors and textures, and that such variations or adaptations are true to the spirit, if not the letter of the culinary law.

I'd be right there with you, had I not recently discovered that there is a small but vocal community of carbonara purists out there, trolling the web in order to find and attack the authors of so-called "bastardized" carbonara recipes. Edward Schneider of The New York Times became one such victim when he blogged about his attempt to recreate at home the carbonara dish he had been served by Joël Robuchon at his restaurant in Monte Carlo.

This carbonara uses small bite-sized pasta such as acini di pepe, although we settled for orzo. The pasta is served with crispy strips of bacon, cracked black pepper and a rich creamy sauce of caramelized shallots, parmesan cheese and heavy cream. Schneider suggests slow cooking an egg for 45 minutes at 145 degrees and cracking one into each serving, but when we tried to fudge this, we wound up with hardboiled eggs. So we had egg salad for the next day's lunch and just put a raw egg into each bowl of hot pasta and then stirred it all together and ate our soupy carbonara with a spoon.


orzo carbonara

As amazing as that dish sounds, folks immediately went to town in the comments, belittling Schneider for calling such a dish a carbonara, and going so far as to demand a correction from the Times and less sloppy and careless global reporting. It was all pretty ridiculous. (Bonus points if you can pick out Boyfriend's inflammatory comment aimed at putting uppity carbonara purists in their rightful place.)

Robuchon is a masterful French chef. He was actually voted the chef of the CENTURY, so he's got nothing to prove, and I'm sure he's well aware of the "true" recipe for carbonara. That being said, the chef of the century is not going to serve the traditional carbonara as perfected by Roman peasants. He's going to take that tried and true recipe and play around with it, tweaking the ingredients and methods in order to create something new and high end that both pays homage to and is evocative of the original dish. Great chefs don't replicate, they create.

Now, I am sure that "real" carbonara is fucking fantastic. I'd love to make it some day. Perhaps I'll see the error of my ways and never again add cream or garlic or parsley or bacon. However, I'm pretty sure I'm always going to think the carbonara I grew up with is delicious— because it is, bastardization or not! And so was Schneider/Robuchon's!

Basically, the way I feel is that if someone thinks that carbonara has cream in it, that doesn't make them an idiot and that doesn't even make them wrong. Their understanding of the dish is simply filtered through an American lens. For better or for worse, cream and bacon have become part of the dish's identity, and people can and should call pasta with bacon and a cream/egg/cheese sauce carbonara. That's cultural evolution for you.

Our enjoyment of food is deeply tied to memory and nostalgia, so I can understand being attached to a particular recipe. For instance, I doubt you'd be able to convince me there's a better way to make pesto. However, I'm hardly about to attack someone if they have a different idea about how to prepare it. What is the kitchen, if not a place to experiment with taste and smell and flavor? And as Schneider points out, the flavors of carbonara "seem to lend themselves to being taken apart and put back together again." Why not change things up up a bit?

Recipes aren't written in stone, and each person is going to have their own tastes and opinions. It's subjective. In any dish there is always room for change, and dare I say it, maybe even for improvement? To be too attached to any one recipe is just close-minded and irrational. Don't let your culinary creativity be stifled, and don't worry if stodgy purists think you're calling your dish the wrong thing! Cook and eat what you love, whatever you call it.

If, by any chance, you'd like to read more about the real carbonara, one particularly obnoxious fellow has written a minor epic detailing the reasons why you must never, under any circumstances, deviate from the tried and true Roman original. There's also this less pompous and self important piece on traditional carbonara technique and an accompanying recipe from Saveur, although it uses parmesan rather than romano. I'm fascinated by the thought of a silkily creamy sauce made only from eggs and cheese, so don't be surprised if I blog a more traditional version of this dish sometime soon.

Finally, let me just say that however you may change, adapt or "bastardize" any of the meals we describe here on garlicus maximus, I wish you the best of luck in your kitchen. May all that you eat be delicious!

master meals, week 2: david burke's steak and egg salad pita

This week's Master Meal features David Burke, who has like, seventeen amazing restaurants in New York City. Nathan and I had a lovely meal at Fishtail, and Nate's also been to the former David Burke & Donatella. I was really excited to learn that Burke would be appearing on Top Chef Masters, because I feel like he's one of those chefs in New York whose touch turns everything to culinary gold. Even though I've only eaten one inexpensive Restaurant Week meal at a David Burke establishment, I can tell that this is a man with great vision for his food, who considers every detail when creating his restaurant experiences.

For our second Master Meal, Nathan and I had the distinct challenge of translating Burke's playful and artistic culinary creations into home dining. Luckily for us, Burke had done half the work for us, drafting several "easy way" versions of dishes he actually serves at his restaurants for Food & Wine Magazine. After much consideration, we went with the steak and egg salad sandwiches. OK, to be honest the minute I saw the phrase "deviled egg salad," I knew Nathan would insist we make it, and that was fine by me. Instant end to deliberation.


steak and egg pita

Unlike our first Master Meal, which was slightly underwhelming, this was a great success. The egg salad mixed four chopped hard-boiled eggs with mayo, hot sauce, Woucestershire, paprika, dry mustard, diced celery, and some parsley and onion in place of the recommended chives. This had a nice kick to it, but wasn't too "angry," (this appears to be David Burke's favorite food adjective), in part because I added some extra mayo. I was skeptical about the egg boiling method, (cover eggs with water, bring to a boil, then turn off the heat and let them sit for ten minutes before draining and peeling), but it worked almost perfectly, with firm yolks that still had a hint of orange gooeyness in their centers. (I love my eggs to be slightly less than hardboiled.)

The steak, which we seasoned, brushed with olive oil, and pan fried for five minutes a side, was delicious, with a wonderfully seared crust and perfectly juicy, medium rare interior. The watercress, tossed with lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pepper, finished off the sandwich with a burst of freshness. My only slight complaint is universal to steak sandwiches: the steak strips are too hard to bite into, and I always end up pulling huge pieces out of the bread. Other than that, everything was great. Even the fact that we could only find whole wheat pitas to brush with olive oil and grill couldn't bring down our meal. Total success.

Unfortunately, while our meal may have turned out better this week, the result for our contestant of choice was the same: last place. And while Jimmy Bradley's failures could pretty much be attributed to his partner, David Burke had no one to whom he could pass the buck. He choked all by his lonesome. To his credit, they did seem to have a fair number of good things to say about what he made, but I think the editors must have been being really nice to him, considering the critics gave him really awful scores. It's a bummer too, because Marcus Samuelsson, who wound up in the winner's circle with Carmen Gonzalez, seems like a cocky bastard. If he's the ultimate Master, I'll be so angry, especially when I think about just how totally sweet and awesome last season's winner, Rick Bayless and runner up Hubert Keller were.

Anyway, we didn't just pig out on steak sandwiches and watch tv. I also made up a quick baby arugala, itty bitty tomato, blue cheese and crouton salad with dressing using this Alice Waters' recipe because I felt like we couldn't just have sandwiches for dinner, and also because I'd had the tab with the (incredibly easy) recipe up in my work browser for almost a week. The directions call for smashing one small garlic clove and two pinches of salt into a paste, adding two tablespoons of red wine vinegar and some freshly ground pepper. After that "macerates," or whatever, you whisk in two or three tablespoons of olive oil and you're done! Easy and delicious.

The only step that is remotely tricky is the garlic smooshing, which is meant to be done in a mortar and pestle. Now, while I have dreams of a Julia Child style "mother of all mortars" someday gracing my countertop, this is not currently something either of us own. However, Nathan and I both have nice wooden muddlers that some alcoholic beverage vendor was handing out for free at a Yelp event we went to last year. Aside from my recent venture into the world of mojitos, the muddlers rarely get used in their first line of work. Instead, they usually get called into duty as pestles, and they are pretty good at making the substitution. We've tried various stand in mortars, and last night I finally found the perfect one: some random ceramic sake container that someone in Nathan's apartment had left down on the free stuff table. It was deep, with a narrow bottom, and had a spout which later proved quite handy when it came to pouring the dressing. I love successfully improvising kitchen appliances.

Thus ends this week's edition of Master Meals. Next week six of the chefs featured in season one will be back, which rocks my rocks. Unfortunately, among them is Ludo Lefebvre, who was one arrogant son of a bitch. I can tell you for certain that we won't be featuring him on the blog any time soon, and I will definitely be rooting for him to lose again. I am also hesitant to try my hand at anything of Wylie Dufresne's, because I probably wouldn't have the necessary gadgetry.

So what are we going to make? Well, unlike the first two installments of Master Meals, Nathan and I haven't eaten at the restaurants of any of these six chefs. However, I did read The United States of Arugula, and I was intrigued by its mention of Jonathan Waxman's roast chicken dish, which sold for an unprecedented $23 way back in 1984. We had such great success with Julia's chicken recipe that I've been itching to make another one, so don't be surprised if you find an oven roaster featured next week. We'll see what Nathan has to say about this idea. Until then, stay tuned.

eggs benedict burger

eggs benedict burger

One of the most delicious things in the world is Hollandaise sauce, and for good reason. I mean it's mainly egg yolk and melted butter, two things that make pretty much everything richer and better. Add in a squirt of lemon juice, a few drops of hot sauce, and a dash of salt and pepper, and you've got some liquid love to pour over your plate.

It almost sounds too good to be true, and I have to admit, there is a catch. Actually getting the sauce to the proper creamy state is no easy task-- all too often, the sauce breaks and you wind up with lots of grainy yellowness floating in butter, and you want to break down and cry. However, there is an easy save which I find myself relying on 9 times out of 10: add a splash of cream or half and half and whisk until everything magically comes back together. Whenever this happens to me, I can't help those feelings of despair that come creeping in: "this time I've really ruined it! my hollandaise is beyond repair!" By now, I should know better than to doubt cream's restorative powers, as this is a never fail fix.

Of course, part of the problem I think I keep having is that I am trying to do without a double boiler, which most recipes recommend you use in order to get the eggs to cook without scrambling. Instead, I've tried adding the melted butter into a bowl with the yolk, lemon, hot sauce, salt and pepper, and beating that together before putting that over the heat again to thicken it. For some reason, this doesn't work quite as well as the traditional method, which I've tried on less lazy occasions. Feel free to go the extra mile with the double boiler, but if you don't, you've always got the cream trick up your sleeve.

Anyway. Hollandaise sauce is great over steamed vegetables, but of course is best known as the main component of eggs benedict. I like to make up my own variation of the dish with the expected english muffin, bacon and poached eggs, elevating it to dinner or lunch status by serving it on a nice meaty burger. Nathan and I did this last week with grass fed beef I got from the food co-op's winter share. Both of us were amazed how different the grass fed beef tasted— so much meatier, almost like marrow. It wasn't necessarily better than the beef you're used to, but it was definitely an unexpectedly delicious change. We made half pound burgers, which is larger than I usually eat, and it was more than I could finish. It was also a little bigger than my muffin could handle, so you might want to follow Nathan's lead and use a nice kaiser roll. I love kaiser rolls, but they are usually much bigger than the burgers I eat, and in this case eggs benedict is supposed to be on an English muffin.

You may notice that the hollandaise sauce in the photo, (which features an earlier benedict burger made with ground beef from the butcher), is a little weird looking. That's because I melted the butter in with the bacon grease that was already in my pan, so there's some bacony crumbs mixed in there. This was tasty, but made me feel even more like I was about to have a heart attack, so keep that in mind before you try it in your own kitchen.

cooking in harlem/chez panisse lobster

dinner on 5th ave

That was the first meal Nathan and I enjoyed in my new Harlem apartment. I have to admit, after a long and exhausting move, to a kitchen with 18 inches of usable counter space, I wasn't in the mood to prepare a big meal. Instead, I breaded and fried some pork chops, an easy favorite of mine. I also cooked up the extra egg and breadcrumbs afterward, which is always a yummy extra treat. For the starch and the veggie I sauteed some spinach and cooked up some tortellini. This time, I went for something a little more unusual than tomato sauce: I defrosted the lobster sauce I had made some months ago while preparing an Alice Water's recipe for lobster stuffed cabbage rolls. We paired it all with a Jose Reyes branded Cabernet that Lauren and Grace had so generously given me. Yes, Jose Reyes has his own wine. Let's go Mets.

a great way to kick off cooking in my new home

Nathan and I had made the initial lobster dish for his mom and his grandma, who had previously given me the Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook after we went to the restaurant for what was an absolutely amazing meal. When we tried to recreate Chez Panisse's amazing food in Chelsea, it was among one of the most time consuming and ambitious meals I had ever prepared. However, it did yield lots and lots of a very delicious and flavorful creamy lobster sauce, which was great over Borgatti ravioli, linguini and the tortellini pictured above.

As for Alice's cabbage and lobster, I think it was a particularly impressive meal, and so I've included the recipe, which Nathan and I followed pretty faithfully. However, Alice has a whole crazy menu with lamb and shit that she serves her lobster with as part of a four course meal at Chez Panisse. With a dish this labor intensive, that was obviously not happening. (As it was, we were cooking for four hours, much to Nathan's grandma's displeasure.) So, when Alice says it serves six, keep in mind that is as first course, not a main. We only accompanied our meal with a nice loaf of french bread, and it comfortably fed four, with lots of left over sauce.

So, without further ado:


Lobster in Cabbage Leaves with Roasted Peppers
(from Alice Waters' Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook, published in 1982)
serves 6

lobster in cabbage leaves with roasted red peppers

The Cabbage:
1 head savoy cabbage, about 1½ pounds
Cut out the cone-shaped heart of a firm green savoy cabbage. Remove the outer leaves and blanch the whole cabbage in boiling salted water for 2 to 3 minutes. Drain. When the cabbage is cool enough to handle, separate the leaves and blanch them for 1 to 2 minutes. Drain them and dry them well. Cut out the large ribs of 12 leaves and blanch them for 1 to 2 minutes. Drain them and dry them well. Cut out the large ribs of 12 leaves and trim them into rectangles about 5 inches by 3 inches.

boiled alive

To Cook the Lobster:
3 lively lobsters, 1 to 1½ pounds each
½ cup coarse sea salt
2 bay leaves
4 sprigs thyme
1 lemon
10 to 12 black peppercorns
Prepare a court-bouillon of 8 to 10 quarts water, ½ cup coarse sea salt, 2 bay leaves, 4 thyme sprigs, 1 sliced lemon, and 10 to 12 black peppercorns. Bring the court-bouillon to a rapid boil and cook the lobsters in it for about 3 to 4 minutes. Remove the lobsters. Strain and reserve the court-bouillon. When the lobsters are cool enough to handle, remove the meat from the tails and claws and reserve it. Remove the gravelly stomach sac and discard it; reserve the shells and the coral, if any.

dismemberment

The Lobster Bisque:
The reserved shells (and coral) from the cooked lobster
2 table spoons olive oil
¼ pound unsalted butter
2 medium carrots
2 medium onions
1 medium leek
1 celery rib
3 shallots
2 tablespoons Armagnac or Cognac
1 cup white wine
3 medium tomatoes
Heat 2 tablespoons olive oil over medium-high heat and saute the shells of the lobsters for 3 minutes. Reduce the heat to medium and add ¼ pound butter (and the reserved coral). Cook over very low heat until the butter melts. Trim and dice finely 2 carrots, 2 onions, 1 leek, 1 celery rib, and 3 shallots. Add the vegetables to the pan and cook over medium heat for 5 minutes. Increase the heat and flame with 2 tablespoons Armagnac or Cognac. Add 1 cup white wine, 3 chopped tomatoes, and water to barely cover. Simmer for 30 minutes. Break the shells in a blender and force the shells and sauce through a very fine sieve. Let the sauce rest for 5 minutes to allow the butter to rise to the surface. Skim the butter and reserve it.

lobster bisque simmering

To Assemble the Lobster Packages:
The prepared cabbage leaves
The reserved lobster meat
The reserved lobster butter
12 chervil sprigs
The strained court-bouillon
Allow one half of a claw and one quarter of a tail for each package. Lay the 12 cabbage leaves flat on a worktable. Place the lobster meat, red side down, in the lower center of the leaves. Drizzle some lobster butter over each package and put a sprig of chervil on top of each. Fold the bottom of each leaf over the lobster, then fold in the sides and roll forward over the top of the lead to make a tightly closed package. Steam the packages to 8 to 10 minutes over the simmering court-bouillon.

cabbage lobster rolls in the steamer

The Sauce and the Garnish:
The lobster bisque
½ pound unsalted butter
1 small red pepper, roasted, peeled, and cut into ¼-inch dice
12 chervil sprigs
Reduce the lobster bisque by half over high heat and whisk in ½ pound butter, cut into bits and softened. Remove the sauce from the heat.
Place the lobster packages on warm plates and spoon the sauce over them. Garnish with the diced peppers and chervil.

Labor intensive, but undeniably delicious, successfully preparing this dish gave Nathan and me a huge sense of accomplishment. However, we did make a couple of changes and had a few difficulties which I guess I should make note of:

1. We did not trim the cabbage leaves into rectangles, which seemed overly fussy and a waste of perfectly good cabbage. I see no reason you should either. I also am not sure what savoy cabbage is, but I used a slightly purply looking one I had gotten from the food co-op, and it was just fine.

2. The trickiest step was breaking down the bisque in the blender. Alice says to break the shells in the blender, so we wasted a good deal of time trying to do this in a leaky food processor. Personally, I don't see the point. In our attempts to force the shells through a sieve, we wound up with some tiny tiny but still crunchy pieces of lobster shell, which was kind of gross. If I made this again, I would strain the sauce and remove the shells, making sure they didn't have any of the vegetables lodged inside. Then, I would go to town with my immersion blender. I probably wouldn't even use the sieve, although I'm sure it'd be smoother and more velvety that way.

3. We couldn't find chervil, which I must admit I've never cooked with, so I don't really know what it tastes like or if it would have improved the dish. I do know there were supposed to be chervil sprigs in each cabbage roll, and that fresh thyme sprigs were not a great substitution-- the stems are too woody.

4. We had spent hours getting everything done, and rolled and steamed all our little lobster packages only to discover that we should have been reducing the bisque by half all along. By this point, we had one very impatient and hungry grandmother on our hands, and bisque that was taking forever to reduce. We ended up serving it in a thinner, more broth-like state, without the extra half pound (!!) of butter. It was like a cabbage lobster roll in a bowl of lobster soup. I reduced the large amount of leftover broth the next day, and it was definitely better for it, although it was still really delicious and incredibly flavorful as we served it.

5. OK, there is no note five, but I felt strange leaving off at four, so let me just say that I'd probably just make the bisque part of this recipe and do something else with the lobster. I might just even eat it plain with melted butter. Yum. Or make lobster roll sandwiches, which I love. This is not to say that the cabbage rolls weren't tasty, but they did hide the beautiful lobster, and I'd like to try serving my lobster in a different way next time. However, I'd DEFINITELY use the shells to make the amazing and delicious bisque. So. Good.

not the liveliest lobster, but still slightly startling, right Nathan?

an old standby

spaghetti carbonara

One of the first things I ever tried to make myself for dinner was spaghetti carbonara. It is deceptively simple: just linguine, eggs, half and half, grated romano cheese, parsley, bacon, garlic, salt and pepper. However, the proportions of these things are extremely important. Perhaps unsurprisingly, my general tendency to wing things, which generally serves me well, often is my undoing when it comes to carbonara.

Unfortunately, this particular evening was a prime example of poorly proportioned carbonara-- dry, and short on bacon. Plus the problems were exacerbated by two less than ideal substitutions: spaghetti for linguine and a particularly pungent parmesan for romano. Nathan will disagree with me but I really feel that the creamy sauce coats the flat linguine noodle much better than it does a round spaghetti strand. That being said, I think that this linguine's biggest problem was the parmesan, which we got from Whole Foods. Normally, I use grated Romano, which is cheaper, but I'm always happy when restaurants serve parmesan. The grated cheese is a big part of the recipe, but with parmesan, it became quite overpowering. I'm not sure whether to chalk this up to simply adding too much cheese, or to the parmesan being more strongly flavored than the romano and therefore serving better as an accent than as a main component of the sauce. You live you learn, although that's not to to say it still wasn't pretty tasty.

I've asked my dad for the exact recipe for my own future reference and to also benefit our non existent readers. Unfortunately, even that's a bit sketchy on the exact ratios. What he's written down is a quarter pound bacon and "lots of garlic," one egg and four tablespoons half and half. I'm not sure how much cheese he uses, or even how much pasta that's for. I know he normally doubles those quantities, so maybe that is what he uses for a half pound linguini? Haha, I guess this is where I get my tendency to just add ingredients haphazardly without measuring. I will add that it is a good idea to reserve some of the pasta water to add to the sauce if you find that it is too dry. This probably would have helped me out on this particular occasion.

We accompanied our pasta with a fresh green salad that we made up at Whole Foods. This is generally a good plan for us since we don't have to buy a whole head of lettuce, which will often go bad before it is used up. We make sure not to add too many heavy toppings to keep the weight and by extension, the price, down. For example, we can make up a hard boiled egg once we get home if we so desire. Usually Nathan is on salad making duty, but on this night I took the helm. I used all three salad mixes they offered at the salad bar: spinach, arugula and micro greens, and topped it off with some red onions and plenty of croutons and blue cheese. I don't recall exactly, but I think we just dressed it with some simple olive oil and vinegar.


blue cheese salad

I'll leave you with a shot of the lovely Picket Fence wine that completed our meal, which Nathan got from his dad for Christmas. I won't tell you what our evening activity was that night, but the eagle eyed reader will take note of the subtle clue in the following photo.


picket fence wine

french toast success

oven baked amaretto pannetone french toast

Despite my doing a totally half assed job, this boozy baked french toast recipe came out pretty awesome. No measurements, just milk, beaten organic food co-op eggs, some cheap ass amaretto, brown sugar, cinnamon, vanilla extract and a dash of salt mixed together and poured over buttered slices of pattetone. I was deathly afraid it would be too dry/too boozy, but instead got the slam dunk breakfast I had hoped for.

I love when a yummy french toasty is all crispy on the outside and runny on the inside. Unfortunately it was taking a longer to cook than the prescribed half hour (I kept underestimating how hot to set the oven) so I popped it under the broiler to finish off and the edges on one side started to burn a little. Minor damage, but still a shame. I normally would have been more patient, but Laura needed to leave for work so I tried a short cut. Unless your bread is at very even levels in your pan, I don't recommend the broiler for this one.

That being said, the broiler is a new-found love of mine. My mom doesn't have a broiler in her stove at home, because there is a drawer for storing pots and pans under the oven. I'd broiled things in the toaster oven, so I knew that broiling meant that the heat was coming only from above, but I only recently discovered/realized that the drawer under my oven is meant to serve as its broiler.

My stove is an ancient gas range which I have to light manually by lighting the pilot and then opening the bottom drawer and lighting the burner there, which is prone to ignite in a rather explosive manner if the gas is left running for more than a few seconds. I never would have thought to cook anything in that bottom drawer had it not been for witnessing my Aunt Cathy utilizing her similarly designed broiler to cook our beloved garlic sweet potatoes, from Mark Bittman's first Thanksgiving column in the New York Times, dating all the way back to 1997. My broiler can crisp things up pretty fast, so you've got to keep an eye on it, but it is pretty darn useful! I'm a little embarrassed it took me so long to discover it, but I'm sure glad that I have!


fruit studded french toast

cooking 2010

Nathan and Jess both independently have suggested I keep note of everything that I cook, so I figured it could be somewhat of a project for the new year.

I didn't cook anything the week after Christmas, but I think I quite made up for it this week.

Nathan recently got me this great book, The Flavor Bible, and I happened to flip open to the monkfish page on Monday. For every ingredient, they have complied a list of other ingredients that accomplished chefs consider to be complementary, as well as brief descriptions of their go-to dishes for that ingredient. Serendipitously, monkfish was described as a great match with cabbage, garlic and potatoes, (all of which I had recently gotten from my CSA food co-op), and bacon, (which I pretty much always have on hand). Since I wasn't sure of what to do from there, I typed in those ingredients into google, and came up with this recipe, which included a couple of other things I had lying around: shallots, red wine, fresh thyme, bay leaves, orange juice, and chicken stock, which I had made and froze myself. All I had to buy was the parsley and monkfish, which cost $10 a pound.

I quartered the shallot and also a small onion and I think a couple of smashed garlic cloves, and sauteed them with the bay leaves, parsley and thyme in some butter and olive oil. I added a cup of wine, some stock, the juice of two small oranges, some salt and pepper and cooked the cabbage in the mixture for 40 minutes. There was a lot of liquid involved, but in the end it all cooked off, leaving a deliciously flavored vegetable behind. I think that the homemade stock really gave it an added richness and depth of flavor, but even without it this cabbage would have been a winner.

Meanwhile, I had marinaded the fish in olive oil with salt and pepper for about a half an hour. Before we started cooking it Nathan had to bone the thing, because I was not paying attention and didn't ask the fish guy to do it for me. My boyfriend is incredible, so he did this perfectly. So impressive. By the way, if you don't know, monkfish is incredibly hideous. We quickly pan seared it in the cast iron skillet, and then wrapped it in two slices of bacon and threw it in the oven for about 15 minutes. I stuck it under the broiler in the end so that the bacon would get nice and crisp. Amazingly, the fish was moist and delicious, but not undercooked. A triumph.

My recipe suggested preparing mashed potatoes, but I wanted something a little more toothsome. The potatoes I sliced thinly and pan fried with garlic in a little bacon fat, (sorry mom and dad). There were way too many of them in the pan, but I kept shifting them around to get as many as possible crispy. I finished them off in the oven with the lid on, and they were great. The crispy ones were great, but even the ones that weren't got cooked through nicely, and there were tasty garlic nuggets every so often.

Together, this made for an amazing meal. The Flavor Bible wasn't playing around when it suggested combining all these different things. Separately, each component of the meal was delicious, but together, the ingredients really sang. Wow. A symphony of taste!

Wednesday night we went a more traditional route and fried up some crispy onions with a couple of small blue seared shoulder round steaks from Whole Foods. These were pretty much raw in the middle, which was really rich and meaty tasting, but probably not a way I'd chose to eat my steak in the future, especially if it was a normal supermarket steak. As our side dishes, we made up some rice, a roasted red pepper, and creamed spinach with a poached egg. We used frozen spinach upon Nathan's insistence, but I'll grudgingly concede that it wasn't even half bad. The other ingredients were pretty basic, just half and half, flour, onions, garlic, butter and nutmeg. It was easy and delicious. Do not fear egg poaching-- just heat a couple of inches of water until bubbles are forming on the sides and then crack in your eggs for four minutes. Remove carefully with a slotted spoon, (Nathan managed to break my yolk, which was so sad and left me way less runny goodness) and this WILL be perfect.

Thursday I was home alone and made one of my standard issue dinners: panfried pork chops, orrechiette with sauteed mushrooms in a homemade tomato sauce with fresh rosemary, parsley and basil, and some steamed broccoli rabe with garlic and oil which I kind of burned because I am bad at cooking alone. I also overcooked the pork, which was a thinner cut than I am used to having. This dinner was not all that well executed, I'm sorry to say. I think I was missing my boy in the kitchen! However, I will say that the pasta was great with some grated Romano cheese. Still have some of that in the fridge to look forward to!

Saturday, Nathan and I had Bart over for dinner and made lamb chops with a radish salad and a potato leek gratin. We boiled the potatoes in the left over half and half from the creamed spinach, and sauted the leeks with butter and a little bit of bouillon because I didn't have a chance to bring my stock over to his house. We actually forgot to cream the leeks, and just poured the extra half and half over the whole thing, which ended up having an extra layer of potatoes on the bottom. This wound up being a little watery, but delicious.

Thinly sliced radishes with plenty of olive oil, garlic and salt and pepper are tasty enough on their own, but try tossing in some leek tops and the crunchy, slightly bitter leaves. Drizzle on the balsamic, and you have an amazing salad.

The third component of the meal offers this cautionary tale: Never cook with jerk seasoning on the stove top unless you have a super effective fume hood, (I suspect the oven would be better, but not a perfect solution). Nathan and Bart made this crucial mistake with their lamb, and we all paid the price. Our lovely chops had been on the griddle for only a few minutes when the jerk spices started burning, and the fumes became unbearable. It was like pepper spray, and Bart and I beat a quick retreat back to Pete's room to take refuge from the smoke. I could barely breathe and could not stop coughing. Nathan somehow managed to continue manning the stove, although he was forced to undercook the lamb a bit to stop the meat from releasing toxins into the air. That stuff is lethally hot, as my lamb managed to take on a considerable amount of heat just from being cooked in close proximity to their stupid jerk sauce. My lips were on fire. Despite that major hiccup, it was a tasty meal, with plenty of good wine courtesy of Bartosz.

All of these meals were great, (or would have been without hellish jerk seasoning), and were actually gluten free, save for the pasta and creamed spinach, which easily could be if you used the right flour and gluten free nutmeg. And that's my week in the kitchen in review, for posterity's sake!