bacon-y carrot potato crusted pie

Sometimes all it takes is a photo, and a recipe will jump the line straight to the top of my "to cook list." A ridiculously rustic pie, with a burnished filling of caramelized carrots and bacon? Why don't you twist my arm a little harder, photographer blogger lady man sir?

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.

french apple cake/super fast sauteed apples and ice cream

So remember when my friends and I went apple picking?




Cute right? Yeah I know. Not so cute? The utterly homely but totally delicious and gooey apple cake. It's kind of brown and ugly, and I could barely get it out of the pan, but damn if it wasn't really, really good.

beet green spaghetti with raisins/cauliflower with hazelnut, pear and sage

This is this sort of meal I miss making now, in the dead of winter. God, I can't wait for spring! When the food co-op is in full swing, our fridge is chock full of all sorts of weird veggie odds and ends, and it's both a pleasure and a challenge to use that bounty as fully and creatively as I can. For instance: you don't often see them at the grocery store, but there are a lots of vegetables that come with a bunch of leafy greens growing out of one end. Most of the time, those go to waste, which is a shame because those greens can be really tasty, whether they come from turnips, radishes or yes, even beets.

red velvet beet cookie and cream cheese ice cream sandwiches

I don't really like beets all that much, which you may have picked up on, considering that every time my food co-op forces them upon me, I reluctantly come up with some sort of way to cook them for which I can muster only minimal enthusiasm. Yeah that's usually how it goes. Not a total clunker in the bunch, but nothing that made me jump up and say "YES! This is the beet I have been waiting for and now we are in LOVE," and I'm beginning to think it's just never gonna happen.




So basically, this is me giving up on making a "beet dish" that I would really enjoy and just hiding them in a big fat chocolatey cookie. Of course, you occasionally hear about people making "all natural" red velvet cake with beets instead of red food coloring (which is actually more traditional, believe it or not). I could have gone that route, with a delicious cream cheese frosting, but I really wanted to whip up David Lebowitz's cream cheese ice cream, which made me think of ice cream sandwiches, which led me to these red velvet beet cookies.

butter-fried potato and apple slices with porcini mushrooms, shallots, parsley and sage

Man, I can't believe how January is already flying by! And here I am, still blogging about something I made back in October. Luckily, this meal was mainly root vegetables and apples, which store pretty well throughout the winter, so this is still fairly seasonal. As you'll see in the photo above, there were three components of this meal: maple carrot turnips, garlicky turnip tops and, for the main event, potato and apple slices fried in butter with shallots, porcini mushrooms, sage and parsley.

marathon brunch 2: butternut squash baked eggs/french toast with roasted banana ice cream and toasted pumpkin seeds/bagel and lox

If you've been reading along, you'll recall that least year, Laura and hosted a brunch to celebrate the New York City marathon, which conveniently passes right by our apartment. If you've never experienced the marathon, it is hard to imagine how much fun it is to stand out there on the street, cheering and high fiving the runners as they run a seemingly super-human distance. It is also particularly great to be able to pause and reflect on their amazing accomplishments by eating ridiculous amounts of french toast and eggs.

In other words, let me tell you what I made for our second annual marathon brunch.




That's boozy french toast (as discussed in my second blog post ever), with amaretto, eggs, milk (or cream? doesn't matter really), a little sugar and some cinnamon. I let it soak in the egg mixture and then baked it in the oven. I served it with fresh whipped cream, candied pumpkin seeds and roasted banana ice cream. Oh, and a little maple syrup. Just in case there wasn't enough deliciousness piled up on there. The roasted bananas get really lovely and caramelized, and because the fruit is so naturally sweet, you barely need to add any sugar. (My only thought is that this might be even better if there was an egg custard base, because it wasn't quite as creamy as it could have been. But I am afraid of egg custards because the only time I tried to make one it broke so I'll take a slightly crystallized ice cream over prolonged stove-top trauma.)

cheesy baked squash gratin

What you see here is actually the leftovers from a big dish of acorn and butternut squash chunks baked up with some bread and cheese and a little cream-- essentially, another savory bread pudding.

It's original incarnation was as a delicious, if slightly awkward to eat without utensils party food. Laura and I usually put together a pretty well received spread of party snacks, and this was no exception. That being said, I think it was even better the next morning, heated up and served with a fried egg.

fried eggplant balls, mustard braised green beans and pancetta pappardelle with stewed tomatoes

Not to toot my own horn or anything, but this was probably one of the best dinners I made all year. Nathan helped, but this was mostly my endeavor, and both he and Laura had nothing but good things to say about the meal. When you've got some crispy fried goodness, a tasty, honest-to-goodness healthy vegetable, and a really solid pasta dish, that's pretty much a guaranteed recipe for a first rate feast.

fusilli with tuna, tomatoes and greens

This dinner came together around this delicious wasabi mayo that they serve with the tuna sandwich at Lure Fishbar. I work in the same building as Lure, and our magazine has a trade account there, which we always use to order food for meetings with different museum curators. One time, we ordered a couple of the tuna sandwiches, and they gave us a big tub of their housemade wasabi mayo to go with them.

After the lunch was over, and I successfully scavenged the leftovers, I brought home the big thing of mayo with the intentions of searing off a nice tuna steak to go with it for my dinner. Instead, I made this pasta.

roasted squash caramelized onions 3 ways

So one of the things you get en mass from my food co-op is winter squash. Acorn, delicata, butternut... just lots and lots of squash. The easiest thing to do with it is to roast it up with a little butter and salt and pepper for like 45 minutes or until it gets nice and tender. That on its own is pretty good, but I like to jazz it up with some caramelized onions and crispy fried sage. From there, there's plenty of good things to do with it.

red pepper hazelnut salmon

I stumble across recipes everywhere, and I never know what's going to catch my eye and get me to take a second look at one. In this instance, I think that it was probably that this roasted salmon with red pepper hazelnut pesto came from someplace called the Thyme Cafe & Market. I know that's a pretty cutesy name, but I also kind of love it. And then the recipe was an interesting sounding salmon dish with roasted red peppers, which I had in abundance from the food co-op, and toasted hazelnuts, which sounded delicious. I was sold.

As it turns out, this was actually really similar to a couple of things that I made last year: romesco sauce and pesto trapanese. If you'll recall, I actually wasn't too crazy about either of them, but I guess I just wasn't ready to give up on the idea. Somehow, every time I read a recipe with the nuts and red peppers/tomatoes combo, I just can't resist making it.

stone fruit salad with ginger, lime and mint

I don't think that I have anything else like this on the blog: peaches and nectarines with ginger lime syrup. How good does that sound?

I'm sorry that I didn't post this back when we all actually eat delicious summer peaches and nectarines. I have to work on updating this blog in a more timely fashion, but it's just so easy to fall behind. I'm sorry; I will try to be better.

sunset tomato salad (with mushroom risotto)

I didn't get a great picture of this tomato salad, which Nathan and I made a couple of months ago. I normally make tomato salads with balsamic vinaigrette, basil, garlic and parsley, but when we didn't have garlic in the house, Nathan picked this out of his Sunset cookbook, and it proved to be a great alternative.

Unsurprisingly, considering it comes from a California lifestyle magazine, this tomato salad has a distinct Mexican flair, with spicy polano pepper and zesty lime juice, but make no mistake, this is tomato salad, not salsa. It was fresh and delicious, if slightly spicier than I would have liked.

Also, it was an excellent accompaniment to our famous mushroom risotto.

green bean, fennel and pickled red onion salad/caramelized fennel and onions

I am kind of excited to tell you about these two dishes. They both fit right in with the type of cooking that I usually do, but were still somehow refreshingly different from my everyday meals. First is the Smitten Kitchen's green bean fennel and pickled red onion salad, which I made because I had a ton of food co-op green beans. Then, I jumped at the chance to use up the rest of the fennel, caramelized with onions, in this recipe from Simply Recipes.

beet risotto

So what do you do when you don't like beets and your food co-op keeps providing them by the bushel? (I have to admit, I don't actually know how much a bushel is, but I suspect it is rather a large amount, so even though we get lots and lots of beets, I am probably exaggerating here.) Make something that I really really really like, and hope that it makes the boring beets more enjoyable. And so, beet risotto!

linguine with heirloom tomato, capers, anchovies, and chile/roasted broccoli and garlic with lemon juice and grated cheese

OK, I am officially getting repetitive, but you know what? I am just going to power through and go with it. This is how I cook: with an admittedly nearly bottomless appetite for pasta! And you know what? I don't get tired of it, so hopefully you all can get through one more tomato sauce and spaghetti recipe. Just hang in there, and I'll reward you with a nice broccoli dish. You can do it!

blt spaghetti

OK so this post is basically "spaghetti with tomatoes and some other stuff part two." I hope that's alright. I know that everyone who cooks regularly has their usual fall back tricks in the kitchen, and I am anything but an exception. Yes, I will admit it: I am entirely too dependent on pasta and tomatoes and garlic and cheese and onions and cracked black pepper. I just can't help myself. Can you accept me as I am? Please? OK great, thanks.

pasta with sun gold tomatoes

Hi guys. Just another little pasta dish for you all. I am nothing if not an inveterate collector of pasta recipes, as you have probably come to realize. This one appealed to me largely due to the name: pasta with sun gold tomatoes. Sun gold! How delicious does that sound? A good adjective will get me every time. For example: farm fresh. Call me a total sucker, but I am probably about 15% more likely to order something if it is described as farm fresh. Embarrassing, but true.

charred eggplant and tomatoes with mint and red pepper flakes

Just one simple dish for you today: charred eggplant and tomatoes with mint. Originally it was supposed to be "with harissa and mint," but I don't have harissa. Actually, I didn't even know what it was, but I looked it up, and it's a spicy hot chili sauce from North Africa, so I decided I could just use chili powder. As you probably know, I'm kind of a wimp about spicy food anyway, so I didn't lose too much sleep over it.