steak au poivre/spinach and mushrooms

As I think of what to write about this very traditional "meat and potatoes" type meal (literally), I realize just how infrequently I cook beef. That's healthy, I suppose, but also kind of a shame because I love meat and I love steak and ribs and all that good stuff. This meal, in particular, would totally be right at home on the menu of a steakhouse, albeit one with some heavy French influences. Like Les Halles.

raw kale salad with walnuts, pecorino, lemon and mushrooms/balsamic blackberry juniper ravioli

My first couple of seasons in the food co-op, I was not exactly what you would call a kale fan. The curly leaves and woody stems would totally languish in the fridge for weeks, and was always in danger of wilting and yellowing and even getting thrown out. I had no idea what I was supposed to do with the stuff, to be honest, and even I had a hard time finding many kale recipes online. Oh how times have changed.

bacon blue cheese quinoa/porcini rubbed pork chops

I've always been extremely, extremely skeptical about quinoa. That's like health food, right? No thanks, I'll pass. So what made me pick up a bag? A recipe where the other ingredients are bacon, blue cheese, spinach and cannellini beans, obviously.

crispy chicken wings with mushrooms, garlic, thyme and vermouth

Chicken tends not to be the most exciting type of meat, and it takes a great chicken recipe to get me to stand up and take notice. This, my friends, is a great chicken recipe. And I'm not just saying that because this is by far the garlickiest dish I have ever made.  It's incredibly crispy, without being weighed down with any sort of batter, and the white wine, mushrooms and thyme are the perfect sauce.

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.

buttery mushrooms and parsleyed polenta

Here, Gourmet magazine and Smitten Kitchen combine forces to bring you a predictably awesome dish of garlicy broiled mushrooms. Really, both of them are pretty much food gospel for me, so whenever Deb talks up something from Gourmet, it always goes to the top of my "to-make" list.

(If you know me, you won't be surprised to know that I have an obscenely long "to-make" list. And also "to eat at" list. And "to read" list. And "movie-to-watch" list. It all springs from my mild obsessive compulsive tendencies.)

Anyway. Food blog. Right.

Mushrooms and butter and garlic oh my!

Really, it doesn't get any simpler or tastier than this. Clean off your mushrooms and toss them in a pan with minced garlic, butter, and capers. Roast in a 450˚ oven for 20 minutes. Sprinkle with lemon juice and chopped parsley for a rich but easy side dish.



I served mine with some creamy polenta and some more parsley, but I'm sure it'd be even better with crusty bread. Any time you soak up a yummy sauce with bread the meal becomes 46% more enjoyable. Scientific fact. Seriously.

release/cream of mushroom soup

So, today I was finally cut free, the wires locking my jaw in place replaced with the far more forgiving rubber bands. I still can't really chew, but I can open my mouth and that is enough! On the down side, the past month has NOT been good to my poor teeth. I couldn't stop crying when I was finally able to open my mouth and see just how disgusting they had gotten. I am terrified that this is going to have a long term effect on my teeth, but hopefully a prompt trip to the dentist once the rest of the wires and rubber bands are removed will reverse all the damage. Say a prayer on that one.

Anyway. Nasty teeth and blackened tongue aside, today should be a day for celebration, as much as they dampened any enthusiasm I was initially feeling. I took the rest of the day off from work, and I'm going to see Salt with Paul at 5:20. Then, at 8:00, I'll meet Jess, Grace and Laura for whatever soft Mexican food I can gum down at Toloache, which is celebrating its third anniversary with live music and $3 margaritas. I was hoping to try the manchego cheese quesadilla with truffles and huitlacoche salsa, but I'm not too sure that'll work out in this stage of recovery. Even so, more foods are possible for me this afternoon than they were this morning, and despite the general unpleasantness of a liquid diet, I did eat some good things this past month.


cream of mushroom soup

For instance, this soup was the most delicious and perfect of all those that I made during my mouth's incarceration. For those of you who are counting, that includes zucchini basil soup, corn soup, tomato soup and broccoli chard soup. It also includes sad soupy guacamole, runny hummus and pureed ratatouille, overly oniony gazpacho, and overly green-tasting spinach and carrot soup, not to mention one horrendous experiment with liquefied pork fried rice that you should count yourself lucky to have never ingested. Considering how poor so many of those eating experiences were, you might think this soup is only good by comparison, but I assure you that is not the case. This soup is genuinely delicious, liquid diet or no.

Because my mom is awesome and thoughtful, she bought some mushrooms and made some chicken stock before I arrived home last Thursday, with the idea that I could make a mushroom soup. I love my mom.

If I had known what she was up to, I would have brought home some of the gorgeous dried porcini mushrooms Nathan had brought me back from the San Lorenzo Market in Florence. I'm sure they would have upped the deliciousness ante, but this soup was singing with mushroom flavor even though we only used lame generic white button mushrooms from the supermarket. Using the smitten kitchen as a general guide, we came up with a deliciously light and creamy mushroom soup that was quite similar to the mushroom ravioli dish I made in this blog's infancy.

Anyway, first I sauteed some onions with salt and pepper in hot olive oil. Once they were nice and soft, I added a package of mushrooms, which I had cleaned with a paper towel and sliced thinly. I also tossed in a couple of cloves of minced garlic and a small knob of butter. I cooked all that for about 15 minutes, which is probably why everything tasted so strongly of mushrooms in the end. They got nice and brown, even though I probably could have given them more space to breath. (You know, "don't crowd the mushrooms!" and all that.)

At that point, I added my mom's chicken stock, which she had reheated in a separate pot. She says this is to kill off any bacteria that might have been breeding in there. Normally I just dump frozen stock into the pot, so maybe I should rethink that!!! We really didn't cook it much longer after that, to be honest. After about ten minutes at most, we added some half and half, and then it simmered for maybe another 15 while we finished the dinner for the rest of the family.

The soup went into the blender with a couple of sprigs of parsley. A few quick pulses emulsified everything and took care of the oil slick that had formed on the top of the pot, since I probably used too much olive oil. After that, you're good to go, unless you're me, in which care, it will also need a good straining. So glad those days are behind me, with more and more solid food on the horizon!

As pleased as I am to be off the restrictive liquid diet, this is one recipe that will still be welcome in my kitchen. Rich but light, earthy and creamy and a snap to make, this soup is a definite keeper!

chicken marsala

I know I said I would talk about soup, but frankly, I'm sick of soup, and I don't want to talk about it anymore. And, even more so than my broken jaw soups, this is a long overdue post. According to my Flickr, this photo was taken on June 9th. Wow. Nathan was supposed to cover this entry, but he claims he has nothing to say about this dinner. As you've probably noticed, his contributions to the blog have been few and far in between, so this really isn't that surprising.

Anyway. Chicken marsala. We had bough a nice bottle of marsala wine to make Jody Adam's mushroom fricasse and gnocchi, and we had plenty leftover for this classic chicken dish.


chicken, mushrooms, and angelhair pasta in a marsala wine sauce

Nathan had mentioned many times that his former roommate Dan's mother made awesome chicken marsala, so he inquired after her recipe. It turned out to be from Martha Stewart, and relatively straightforward. We also consulted a Giada DeLaurentis recipe, but ultimately decided against adding either mustard or marscapone.

Basically, all there is to chicken marsala is cooking the chicken and then onions, garlic and mushrooms, adding the wine and reducing it to a glaze. It's never been my favorite dish, but it's pretty tasty. We served our with capellini, but I'd suggest a less delicate pasta like spaghetti or linguini. We also made some green beans with toasted almonds, but they were from a crappy Harlem supermarket and pretty tasteless.

Really, there's not that much more to say. If you have marsala wine, this is a great thing to make with it, but unless you're particularly fond of this dish, this probably isn't something to go out of your way to make. It's yummy, but something about chicken marsala just screams catering hall to me. Not that I wouldn't jump at the opportunity to eat some right now, after three weeks of liquid foods!

glazed Gourmet potatoes and a terrible disappointment

When Gourmet Magazine folded last year, it was almost as if a little part of me died. Growing up, I think I thought Gourmet was just another picture book. My Aunt Cathy had a subscription, and I used to make her read me recipes like they were stories when I came to visit. I still can't believe that it's no longer in existence. A damn shame. Anyway, the good thing is that plenty of the magazine's recipes are available online, from one source or another. Today, I'd like to talk about a wonderful potato recipe that I made last week.


olive oil glazed potatoes with fresh parsley

The original recipe was entitled Fingerling Potatoes with Chives and Parsley, but I didn't have fingerlings, so I just used some regular ones at it worked out fine. (Actually the bag says "Golden Potatoes," if you really want to know.) I just had to slice them into long cross sections.

These potatoes literally couldn't be easier. You simply peel them, place them in the skillet and cover them with water, a couple tablespoons of olive oil and some salt and pepper. Then, you bring it to a boil, and then cover and simmer for ten minutes stirring occasionally. At that point, you take off the lid and let it cook for five more minutes, so that the olive oil sort of glazes over the potatoes. Add freshly chopped herbs, like basil and parsley, and eat immediately. I only had parsley on hand when I made it.


simple and delicious

It was delicious. Absolutely delicious. I will definitely be making this again. Normally I'll just make a baked potato if I'm having them for dinner, but this is so much faster and just plain old better. Good old Gourmet. Still coming through with amazing, fantastic food, even after being cruelly shut down.

I was lucky that those delicious potatoes turned out to be so delicious, because I majorly screwed up the main component of that meal, which was supposed to be a delightfully sweet and summery corn chowder. I was really excited about it too. I had gotten corn from the food co-op, and it was just the sweetest most delicious corn I had even tasted. I cut all the kernels off the cob and set them aside while I made a stock to base the soup on, and let me tell you, I couldn't stop nibbling. It was like candy.

I opened up The Flavor Bible to the corn entry, and in addition to learning that corn goes nicely from everything from crab to maple syrup, I was excited by the suggestions of a chef from Oregon named Vitaly Paley. He had two ideas that really spoke to me, which I will quote:

"We used the husks, which produce a juice, to make a stock for the soup... We made a stock using the corn hucks cooked with a little onion, water, and salt, and let it cook for about 45 minutes. What came out was the most amazing sweet broth. We added the corn, pureed it, and served it chilled. It was so sweet and full of corn flavor you would have sorn there were cream and sugar in it. We now make a corn husk broth to add to a corn, chanterelle, and Dungeness carb risotto with a touch of pesto. Basil pesto and corn really speaks to me. It is a wonderful combination."

You always hear that the best way to make a really sweet and delicious soup infused with bright corn flavor is to boil the cobs first, so I figured I would use the husks as well. I was convinced that this was going to be the most delicious, most flavorful, most corn-like corn soup ever. Liquid gold, if you will. I also was going to add porcini mushrooms and swirl in some of my homemade pesto. I was really excited.

What went wrong? I got the proportion of husk/cob stock to actual kernels completely wrong. Wayyyy too much water and not nearly enough corn. It was totally diluted. I tried adding some cream to thicken it up, but that didn't do much to help. It didn't taste bad, but it was just so bland compared to the glorious soup I envisioned, and the sugary sweet and farm fresh corn I had to work with. When I told Nathan, he employed one of his favorite phrases: casting your pearls before swine. It was a damn shame.

mushroom risotto/fava bean toasts

a Mother's Day feast

This was the dinner table for Mother's Day this year, and I think Dad and I have reason to be proud of the spread we put out. Matt would have helped had he not been working, but he did buy the lovely flowers. I picked up a nice bottle of chardonnay at Lenox Wines, and then whipped up some mushroom risotto and a fava bean spread on Arthur Avenue bread. Dad chipped in with some luscious dijon mustard sword fish. It was a heavenly meal.

Since graduating college, I've become a big fan of risotto and have made it a number of times, including a particularly memorable batch prepared in honor of Nathan's twenty second birthday with pumpkin, porcini mushrooms and red wine. To die for. However, there was a time that I found this simple dish absolutely intimidating. If it were not for my friend Anthony, who is an amazing cook, I doubt I would have ever even attempted the dish. I remember Tony making it for Natalie's birthday senior year and being amazed that he had prepared such an ambitious menu. Pork loin and risotto for 20 people is certainly an impressive feat, but the risotto itself is not nearly as complicated or tricky as I had one believed. With good ingredients and a little patience, anyone can make a delicious, creamy risotto in under an hour.


mushroom risotto

The trick to risotto is knowing that unlike regular rice, which typically uses a 2:1 ratio of water to rice, risotto can absorb more than four times its volume in liquid. In order for the rice to cook properly, the broth must be added gradually so as to not overcook it. The broth should also be warm, or the rice won't cook properly.

To start your risotto, heat some olive and then cook onions and garlic until they begin to soften. This is called the sofrito. Then you can add your extra ingredients, like the cremini mushrooms we used. There are plenty of great potential additions: anything from sausage, meatballs, shrimp, lobster, chard, asparagus or squash will be great. Once they're just about cooked, removed them from the pot with a slotted spoon to leave behind the olive oil, which will be nicely infused with the flavor of your added ingredients.

Toast the rice in the drippings for a few minutes, making sure it gets well coated. Pour in some wine, and stir until it evaporates. Then you can start to add the broth, one ladle at a time. Recipes vary on the exact amount to use, but you can probably get away with less if you cook over lower heat and let most of the broth absorb between additions. Cook at too high a temperature, and your broth will boil away before the rice can absorb it properly. Add more stock when the risotto starts to look dry, but be carefully not submerge the rice in liquid. Stir frequently to make sure the rice gets cooked evenly and doesn't stick to the pot.

Your risotto is done when the rice can't absorb any more liquid, and the two elements have become one cohesive mass. The individual grains should be soft but slightly chewy, and the risotto should be liquidy enough that you can pour it slowly, but solid enough that the broth won't separate from the rice. Add your mushrooms or whatever you're using, and stir to incorporate. Mix in some pats of butter, a good amount of grated cheese and freshly ground black pepper, and serve immediately.

As for the rest of the meal, dad handled the fish so I can't say much about it, but I can tell you about my fava bean toasts. They're something I learned to make when my food co-op threw a number of the then unfamiliar legumes at me last summer. I first tried making a stir-fry-esque dish with fennel and bacon that didn't quite come together. For my second attempt, I put the beans front and center with this bright green spread. It was an unqualified success. Basically, it's just a mash of olive oil roasted garlic, boiled fava beans, a little cream, Parmesan cheese, salt and pepper. It's so simple and tasty!

The only catch with fava beans is that getting them out of the shell is a little labor intensive. First, you have to peel the pods, and then you have to boil the beans for a couple of minutes. After that, you cool them off in ice water and shell them. It's a bit of a pain in the ass, actually, but it's not that hard. It's probably not worth the trouble on a regular basis, but they are a nice change of pace every so often.


fava bean toasts

master meals, week 4: jody adams' gnocchi with mushroom fricassee

I have not been looking forward to writing this entry. Jody Adams may have broken our losing streak by becoming the first featured Master Meals chef to make it to the Champions round, but Nathan and I were less successful back in his kitchen. This was easily the worst thing we've cooked all year, including our blue cheese sauce disaster.

The recipe was for homemade gnocchi with mushroom fricassee, and it looked straightforward enough. Sure, I'd heard that making gnocchi can be pretty tricky, but I had done my research and I thought I had a pretty solid grasp of the process.


our gnocchi

Unfortunately, a theoretical understanding of making gnocchi will only take you so far, and we fell more than a little short in the execution. Instead of light, fluffy potato-y pillows, our gnocchi were dense, doughy bricks. It was quite a disappointment. I think that making good gnocchi is probably one of those things that you have to just develop over time, because I couldn't tell you what went wrong. My only thoughts are that I may have over kneaded the dough, and that it would have been lighter had I added more flour. The Jody Adams recipe used about twice as much potato as compared to flour than the other two recipes I was using as a reference.

Anyway, I won't pretend to give you any gnocchi tips, as I could use some good ones myself. I will, however, tell you a bit more about the mushroom fricassee, which was quite delicious and was the only reason I was able to stomach as much of the gnocchi as I did. We sliced and browned a whole pound of button and portabello mushrooms in some butter. We had to do this in two batches so as to not crowd the mushrooms, (a Julia Child tip). Then we removed them from the pan and sauteed up a shallot and a clove of garlic with more butter until soft. Then we tossed the mushrooms back in with a half a cup of marsala wine and let that reduce to a nice glaze. The recipe also called for fresh thyme, but we did without.

On its own, this mushroom fricassee would have been great. Adams poured reduced heavy cream over her gnocchi and spread the mushrooms, chopped tomatoes and parmesan cheese on top to bake. We used canned chopped tomatoes, which actually worked fine-- it was the gnocchi that were the real problem. They were just a leaden mess, and soaking in all the cream probably didn't help any either. Sprinkled with parsley, though, they actually looked pretty good. As we sadly learned, however, appearances can be deceiving.


not bad looking gnocchi

the souffle challenge

squash souffle, taleggio and mushroom crostini and lemon buttered green beans

I am often disappointed with the lighting when I take my food photos, but am always too hungry to do much to fix it. This picture, however, I'm perfectly happy with. I love the way the bright green beans pop against the darker green plate, and I find the contrast between the orange souffle and the deep blue ceramic bowl quite striking. My dad would be proud of the plate's well balanced color palate, and for once I've taken a photo that looks as delicious as the meal actually was.

This particular meal was comprised of three things: squash souffle, lemon buttered green beans, and Taleggio porcini and cremini mushroom crostini. I made the souffle back in late December in a bout of culinary ambition. I filled four ramekins, but since I was cooking for myself that night, three of them wound up in the freezer and were woefully ignored until President's Day. Grace invited Marc and me to the New York Historical Society, which was free for the week, and afterward they came by the new apartment for dinner. With almost nothing in the house, it was souffle to the rescue!

Before going out, I had the foresight to take the souffles out of the freezer, but I didn't know what else I was going to serve. On our way back from the museum, we stopped at Fairway, where some beautiful fresh green beans cried out to me. I also picked up some cremini mushrooms, remembering I had Taleggio cheese and dried porcinis at home and could easily recreate the mushroom pizza that was such a hit at my earlier party. Grace rounded things out with some AMAZING espresso cookie ice cream from the SoCo Creamery.

When it came to preparing the green beans, I cooked them quickly in the frying pan with some melted butter, garlic, salt, pepper and a generous squeeze of lemon juice. I also sprinkled on a little Romano cheese. So fresh and light and tasty. How vegetables are meant to be eaten.

As for the mushroom dish, I came up with this Mario Batali gem while looking for some good ingredients to pair with my porcinis. This time, I would take the same basic idea and use it as a topping for the fresh Italian bread Marc's grandma had given him. Either way you go, preparing this topping is super easy and the end result is divinely delicious!

Simply saute garlic and shallots or onions in hot olive oil, and then add the sliced mushrooms. You also throw in and cook off the mushroom soaking water leftover from rehydrating the dried porcinis, some fresh thyme, and season with salt and pepper. Put your mushroom mix on pizza or Italian bread slices, sprinkle with Taleggio cheese, and pop those suckers into the oven or toaster oven until everything becomes melty delicious. Top off with a little grated Romano and some fresh ground pepper and you're in for a treat. This makes for a great pizza, but the crostini is even easier!

I do have a few notes to add: Mario cooks the porcinis before the fresh creminis, but I think I reversed the steps with no ill effects. He adds a pinch of chili flakes, but I skipped those and didn't miss them. He also recommends boiling water and 30 minutes of soaking for rehydrating dried mushrooms, not to mentions straining everything with a cheesecloth to get rid of the grit and dirt... In my opinion that's a lot more work than necessary. I've found that hot tap water and ten minutes work just fine. If you just pour the soaking liquid super slowly, any grit will stay at the bottom of the bowl and you'll be fine!

As delicious and tasty as the green beans and crostini were, the most dominant component of the meal was certainly the aforementioned souffle. Despite having a reputation for being extremely difficult to prepare, this souffle recipe seemed fairly straightforward, and I was really excited to make it. I had read all about how great organic eggs were for souffles, and I had just gotten some from my food co-op. With organic milk and squash, this seemed to be the perfect recipe for me— I even had Swiss cheese in the fridge! Unfortunately, I did have two major difficulties with the dish, which took me many hours to complete. I wish I could tell you that you'll learn from my mistakes, but I'm still not entirely sure how to work out this souffle thing.

That being said, the whole thing starts off relatively easily. I cut the squash in half, (it looked like acorn squash, but you can't always tell exact variety when it comes to food co-op offerings), scraped out the seeds, and salt peppered it, spreading on a little butter. Normally, I'd bake it, but I took a short cut and microwaved it face down, which worked perfectly. I scraped out the shells and pureed the flesh with my handy dandy immersion blender.

Then I started a roux by melting butter and cooking it with a few spoonfuls of flour. When you're making a roux, you want to keep stirring it to make sure it doesn't get burned. As I've mentioned before, this recipe could easily be gluten free if you used some gluten free flour in this step. After a few minutes, I added some whole milk and cooked that until it thickened, continuing to stir. Then I mixed in the squash, grated Swiss, brown sugar, salt, cayenne, and nutmeg. After I took it off the heat, I added the three egg yolks. At this point, I thought I was good to go.

Then came the egg whites. Do not, I repeat DO NOT, attempt to whip eggs whites with an immersion blender. As all around useful and handy as this machine is, this is one area where it straight up fails to perform. At this point, I was reduced to whisking the little shits by hand, which was quite possibly the most frustrating thing I've ever done. After at least a half hour, I abandoned my original batch of egg whites, and started afresh with grocery store eggs that had been sitting the fridge for weeks. These whipped right up, forming stiff peaks even with me doing it by hand. Organic eggs would have been nice, but they were just too fresh for me to whip by hand. If possible, use old eggs, an electric mixer, and definitely don't let any water or yolk contaminate your egg whites, and you should avoid the frustration I experienced.

With that battle won, I folded in my egg whites into the batter in two separate batches. Apparently this makes a difference when it comes to lightness and airiness. I just do what I'm told. At this point, you're ready to put your souffle in a nice ramekin and bake the sucker. I followed the online wisdom for souffles and cheesecakes and cooked it in a water bath, which is supposed to cook it more evenly and keep it from cracking. All that entails is filling a larger pan with an inch of water, and then placing your souffle dishes in the bath to bake. I don't know if it works, but I do know that my souffles all took FOREVER to cook, which brings me to my second problem, which I am still stumped by.

If you have any tips on how to ensure that a souffle is cooked all the way through, I'd love to hear them. The temperature on my old oven was always a wild card, and while the souffle I baked there rose beautifully, it was still quite wet inside when I impatiently bit in. The souffles I defrosted must have been a bit waterlogged, because they barely rose at all. In the future I'd probably add the whipped egg whites after defrosting the batter to avoid this problem. Aside from that I managed to get them cook almost all the way through, but the blue ramekin pictured is deeper than the other ones I used, so it was still a touch underdone. This wasn't terrible, but it certainly was frustrating. How do you test for doneness without deflating the thing? Tricky tricky.

Anyway, these problems aside, the squash and cheese and brown sugar made for a delicious combo. This is a damn tasty recipe, but I think that a really well cooked souffle calls for a little bit of practice! However, I still think Grace and Marc enjoyed their dinner, and it probably didn't hurt that I ate the most underdone of the three souffles. It was just so great to have them over and to cook for them without worrying about tiptoeing around crazy people. We just relaxed and watched the Olympics with Laura and Taylor and had SO MUCH FUN. In conclusion, I love living in a reasonably accessible part of the city.

pizza odyssey

When I was still living in the Bronx, no one wanted to come all the way up north to visit. This was understandable, but perpetually disappointing. However, I have great friends, so there were occasions when they all made the trek to visit Laura and me. Generally, this happened I bribed them with food. My final stint as a Bronx hostess was no exception, as I offered our guests the best of Arthur Avenue's imported and homemade delicacies served up on a pizza.

Nathan's delicious meatsa trio

As I alluded to in an earlier entry, our old oven was a totally crazy inferno, to the point where Laura was afraid to light it. The first time I baked a cake, I was shocked to discover that it was cooked through in less than half the prescribed time. It was absolutely impossible to tell what temperature the oven was set to, and I would have to try and gauge by opening the broiler to see the size of the flame. Needless to say, this was a considerable culinary challenge when it came to most foods. However, when it came to pizza, I had long suspected that the high temperatures would only work in my favor.

creamy taleggio cheese with porcini and cremini mushrooms make the night's best pizza

Professional pizza ovens exceed 1000 degrees as a matter of course, so home cooks have difficulty replicating their results. Many bloggers have tried and failed, but they didn't have my oven. I cranked it up to full heat and left it on until my entire apartment was swelteringly hot-- no small achievement considering the jerks downstairs hadn't turned on the heat all month. Anyway, my mom gave me grandma's old oven thermometer, and the needle went past the maximum temperature of 500 degrees and back past 250 degrees before something inside it burst and covered the interior with chalky dust. Also, I got nice rubber coated pot holders for Christmas, and they actually started melting. This pizza party was intense, and probably the closest I'll ever get to making pizza parlor pies at home.

prosciutto di parma, pepperoni, polly-o and sausage

I was pretty proud of how well the whole thing came off. I made my own dough, my own sauce, and used fresh herbs and the finest toppings that Arthur Avenue had to offer. However, that is not to say that things went off without a hitch: my first pizza was actually a total mess. Jess lent me her pizza stone, so I put that in the oven to get properly hot. If you're properly equipped you use a wooden peel to transfer the pizza onto the stone. I was not properly equipped, so I thought maybe I could just drop the pizza in there on a sheet of wax paper. I tried this, and as you probably will have guessed, it immediately began to burn and melt. We awkwardly attempted to transfer the first pizza to a sheet of aluminum foil and tried again. The final product, with tomato sauce, fresh mozzarella from Casa and fresh basil and parsley, was delicious, but more closely resembled a ghetto disaster of a calzone than a proper pizza.

the first attempt: a delicious mess

However, we used the foil technique for all the rest of the pizzas with wonderful success. I ended up making five pizzas that night and seven overall. (I baked up the rest of the dough with some olive oil, herbs and a little grated cheese to make pizza flatbreads to bring to Jess and Marc's birthday). In addition to the deformed plain pie, there was pepperoni one, and several specialty pies: a porcini cremini mushroom taleggio pizza with fresh basil, a lox pizza with a sour cream, dill, shallot sauce and Nathan's home cured salmon, and my boy's prosciutto di parma, sausage, pepperoni stuffed crust send up to the meatsa trio, ingredients purchased at Arthur Ave's amazing Calabria Pork Store.


Nathan's homemade lox with fresh parsley and a dill sour cream shallot topping

The next day I also made two pizzas including a three meat pizza with Polly-O cheese (ran out of the fresh stuff!) and fresh basil and parsley for lunch. They were allllllll awesome, and so easy to make! I've recently recreated the mushroom pie as a crostini, so you can expect an elaboration in a later post, as well more on the homemade tomato sauce. Also, hopefully Nathan will also share his lox with you. For now though, I'll leave you with everything you need to know to make your very own pizza dough.


the risen dough

This recipe makes two 10 or 12 inch pizzas, depending on how successfully you stretch the dough! Bake as soon as you've topped your pizza, and at the highest possible temperature, as it will cook faster and keep the dough from getting soggy and your pizza from being a floppy mess.

Carefully stir one packet of yeast into a cup of warm water with one tablespoon or either sugar or honey. I used sugar, because I forgot my honey at my apartment and I made the dough at Nathan's because boyfriend has a bad-ass Kitchen Aid, but lots of recipes seem to prefer honey. While the yeast is getting nice and frothy, (let it sit for about 5 minutes), mix three cups of flour with two or three tablespoons of olive oil and a teaspoon of salt. Slowly add the yeast and water, mixing until they form a dough. This is easier when you have a mixer, but definitely doable by hand. After it comes together, knead the dough on a floured surface for a few minutes and then form it into a ball. Drizzle olive oil into a bowl to coat it, and set the dough in it to rise, making sure to cover with a towel or plastic wrap. The dough should double after an hour or two, after which you want to knead it again. At that point, you can let it rise again, or you can get down to the business of making pizza, giving each pizza crust a nice dusting of cornmeal on the bottom to make it less sticky. I let my dough rise again for hours and hours, and that was fine. I even refrigerated some of it over night and kneaded it and let it rise again before I finally baked it. You can also freeze your dough, but I think you have to do that before it rises. I was totally expecting to fall flat on my face with my first attempt at pizza dough, but it was surprisingly easy. Try it!

more pizza dough than you could possibly ever need

ravioli with creamy mushroom sauce

ravioli in creamy mushroom sauce

So on January 31st, I moved, leaving the Italian mecca that is Arthur Avenue for the food ghetto of Harlem. In many ways my living situation has improved, but not in terms of food vendors. Therefore, I made a point to take full advantage of Teitel Brothers, Casa Della Mozzarella and Vincent's Meats while they were still in walking distance.

I was going home to Long Island two weekends before I moved, so I thought it would be nice to bring along some Arthur Avenue treats. I'm glad that I did, as they're far less convenient and accessible now that it's February. When I found out my brother would be working Saturday night, I decided to pick up some Borgatti ravioli for dinner. They are the most delicious perfect stuffed pasta in the world, but Matt has celiac, (a gluten intolerance), and can't eat them, so normally we don't either out of familial solidarity. With Matt not around, we were free to indulge in all the gluteny goodness we wanted. That being said, the sauce itself is gluten free and would have been delicious over a good gluten free pasta.

With the ravioli as my starting point, I remembered that I had some white button mushrooms left over from that yummy mushroom tomato sauce I mentioned in the year's first post, so I thought I could make up a nice, earthy mushroom sauce for the pasta. I bought about $8 worth of dried porcini mushrooms at Teitel Brothers-- they sell for a whopping $39 a pound, but I saw them during the holidays at Mike's Deli for $99/lb, so this was actually a comparative bargain! Back at home, Mom got some creminis, which are really young portabellos, and I found a tasty sounding Wolfgang Puck recipe to use as reference.

I started off by making up a quick chicken stock from some bones Mom had in the fridge, carrots, celery, onion, fresh parsley, some dried bouquet garni herbs from the cupboard and lots of water. While this was simmering, I soaked the porcini mushrooms in warm water to rehydrate them and chopped up the button and cremini mushrooms, reserving the stems. Once the stock had been cooking for an hour or so, I took about a cup of it and put it in a smaller pot with the stems to make what Wolfgang calls a mushroom stock. I also took the liberty of adding in the porcini soaking water, which I poured carefully so as to leave the grit and dirt at the bottom of the glass. I let that mixture cook down by half.


mushrooms sauteing

While my mushroom stock was reducing, I sweat garlic, shallots and onions in what turned out to be too much olive oil. When they were all translucent I added and sauteed the mushrooms for about five minutes. Then I added a few glugs of white wine and the reduced stock (sans stems), and let that cook down. When I added the half and half (a cup by Puck, eyeballed by me), it became clear that the whole thing was just too oily, and the sauce never really thickened the way I wanted it too. Oh well. It was still delicious with some salt and pepper over those freshly made raviolis. Boil some water, add salt, and cook them just until they float, and they're ready.

My mom made up some awesome grilled chicken to go with it, marinaded for about a half an hour with parsley and white wine and who knows what else. I also steamed some broccoli, but I forgot about it because I started watching a Steve Martin/Goldie Hawn movie, and it wound up totally mushy and I now know the reason why everyone hates broccoli. Luckily, I was able to resuscitate it in the form of a delicious broccoli soup, but that is a story for another post.

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!