garlicky broccoli rabe, fresh mozzarella and tomato jam sandwich

I know any photo involving gooey, melted cheese is guaranteed to set your mouth a-watering, but trust me when I say that this sandwich is legitimately one of the most delicious ones that I have ever tasted. There's the fresh mozzarella, broccoli rabe loaded with garlic and spicy red pepper flakes, and a sweet, slow cooked tomato jam, all pressed between a loaf of Italian bread like a crispy panini.

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.

baked pasta with cheese and tomatoes

Happy New Year! When I was younger, I had difficulty making resolutions, but now it seems I am full of them: decorate my apartment, keep my room in order, read more books, be less angry and stop flipping out over the little things, volunteer, make art, eat better, get some exercise, get a job with health insurance... Gah. So much room for self-improvement. Daunting, isn't it?

So I'm starting with something easy: a blog entry. Have you missed me? (No, you haven't, non-existent reader, but that's okay.) I would really like to catch up and write about all the things I cook in a more timely manner, and even though it's a daunting task, I'm feeling up to 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.

spicy kale tomato sauce/baked tilapia with breadcrumbs

What happens when you defrost some of last summer's tomato sauce and toss it with cute little tennis racket pasta and leftover kale that you had stir fried with red pepper flakes and red wine vinegar? A nice little pasta dish with a spicy kick is what happens. Definitely nothing fancy, but also one of those cases where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.



And what can you serve that with, you ask? Well how about a little tilapia fillet, lightly seasoned and sprinkled with some scallions, breadcrumbs and a drizzle of olive oil? Just bake it for about ten minutes in a 350˚ oven, and you'll get a nice moist, flakey piece of fish. Not terribly exciting, but hey, it's an easy weeknight dinner and I happen to think it's a pretty tasty fish preparation.

broccoli rabe with oil and garlic/fresh tomato sauce

broccoli rabe

This is simple Italian comfort food at its best. I will admit that the slight bitterness of broccoli rabe can be off-putting, and that it was years before I warmed to it. But now, slick with garlicy olive oil, sauteed broccoli rabe is one of the simplest and easiest things in the world.

This dish only has a handful of ingredients: the broccoli rabe, olive oil and garlic, plus salt and pepper and an optional sprinkling of grated cheese. Making it is a snap. Just get the olive oil nice and hot, toss in the chopped garlic, and then the broccoli rabe. It should still be dripping wet from being washed, so when you cover the pan it steams without burning. You cook it for maybe 8 to 10 minutes, until the leaves wilt and the stems soften. Once it's cooked through, season with salt and pepper and enjoy!


broccoli rabe with pasta in tomato sauce

Broccoli rabe is so hearty and filling that I like to make it a substantial part of the meal. In this particular instance, I just served it with a fresh tomato sauce over tiny pasta shells. I sprinkled both of them with romano cheese. It was straight-up simple Italian food, and it was really good. This is the kind of meal that isn't overly impressive or exciting, but that I am always happy to eat. Salty, garlicy, slightly bitter goodness.

pastina risotto

This was another meal prepared out of necessity, thanks to my broken jaw. Pastina is the smallest type of pasta around. It comes in different shapes, but I've only ever seen it in tiny little stars, which are just adorable. My mom used to make it for me all the time when I was a baby, because it is so soft and small. Obviously, it is a logical dinner choice for one who cannot chew.

Unlike regular pasta, you don't need to salt a big pot of boiling water to make pastina. It is so delicate and small that it would probably pass straight through the strainer and down into the sink if you tried to drain it in a colander. Instead, you can make pastina like risotto, adding the water little by little and stirring it consistently. It can be just as delicious as the real deal, but it takes a fraction of the time to cook, since pastina cooks to her perfection in such a short amount of time.

I made three different versions of this pastina dish, mainly because the first time it was so incredibly delicious. My parents had their own grown up dinners, but they kept sneaking bites of mine because it was just that good. Unfortunately, I was unable to quite replicate my success on the second and third go arounds. The trick to this dish is making sure to add enough liquid to keep it creamy and delicious, rather than gummy and dry.

I started by making a quick sauce with a little garlic and oil and these golden tomatoes from the food co-op. Then I added the pastina, letting it "toast" in the oil like you would risotto, and then adding some water and letting it cook in the liquid. As the pasta began to absorb the sauce, I poured in a little half and half to make sure it wouldn't dry out. After it was mostly cooked through, I put the pastina in a bowl. I stirred in some grated romano cheese, some shredded basil leaves and finally cracked an egg in and mixed it all about. The egg cooked and it became a deliciously rich and creamy dish.

This was only a few days after I had had the rubber bands put it, so solid food was still a wonder and this pastina was the best food I had eaten in weeks. Lest you think it was only good in comparison, my mom kept exclaiming how good it was and asking for more. She was really impressed with my little improvised dinner.




The next night I did much the same thing, only with red tomatoes and a big dollop of ricotta cheese. Unfortunately, I think I cooked it too long, and didn't keep it moist enough, because this turned into a bit of a gluey paste. Not at all tasty, and it was all the more unfortunate because I knew just how good it could have been.




I also made one more slight variation, trying to mix in some extra veggies. I tossed in some zucchini and corn, but the flavors all got a bit muddled and again a bit dry and overcooked. It was better than the incredibly sticky and bland red tomato sauce edition, but it just couldn't compare to the golden tomato pastina.

You can see in the photos just how much creamier the first go around looked. It really came out perfectly.




The pastina risotto method is a bit temperamental, I guess, but it's definitely worth messing around with because the results can be spectacular. Pastina may be a popular baby food, but soft food diet or not, I certainly did enjoy it. And if delicious isn't enough for you, this has also got to be the quickest pasta dish you'll ever make. Quick and easy, but totally homemade and tasty. I'd say that's pretty awesome.

spaghetti with lamb sausage and spicy tomato sauce

I'm not sure, but I might even be able to handle a meal like this these days. The doctors told me no chewing, so I've been trying to adhere to that, but I suspect that spaghetti and tiny slices of sausage would no longer be beyond my mending jaw's capabilities.



Nathan made this dinner for the two of us back in June. Even though it was perfectly delicious, he has declined to feature it in a blog post of his own. He says its too boring. But how could delicious spaghetti in a slightly spicy, onion laden tomato sauce with organic lamb sausage from the Union Square Market be boring?



Topped with grated cheese and served up with a side of sauteed spinach and some Italian bread, this so-called "boring" dinner is the kind of good eating I've been sadly deprived of for far too long.

My next doctor's visit is tomorrow, so please say a prayer that they go ahead and take all this metal out of my mouth! I'd do anything to have an unencumbered mouth for the last week of what has been an incredibly disappointing and depressing summer. Is a good Labor Day weekend too much to ask for?

chicken parmigiana

my chicken parm with broccoli, pesto and sourdough bread

So one of my best friends, Paul, moved into the city last month, and I promised to bring over dinner as a housewarming present. Paul's favorite food is chicken parm, so the menu was a total no brainer. I figured I'd also bring a salad, because I'm always struggling not to waste my food co-op lettuce. Then, while making borchst, I accidentally defrosted a container of pesto I assumed was chicken stock, so we had that too. It was pretty discolored after its time in the freezer. Not pretty. I also made an oreo cheesecake and broccoli strascinati, but I am aiming to make an entry every day for the month of July, so I am going to stretch this meal across three posts.

First, I made Marcella Hazan's famous tomato sauce, which I previously blogged about here. The recipe calls for only canned tomatoes, butter, and an onion. But I of course could not help embellishing, tossing in a garlic clove and finishing it off with plenty of fresh basil and parsley from my food co-op stores. I cooked this in too small a pot, because I didn't want to use the giant one, which meant tomato splattering everywhere and the onion and garlic didn't get as delicious soft and saturated with tomatoey goodness as the last time, so I had to remove them from the sauce rather than smashing them into it. Luckily, it still tasted good, and I saved the onion and garlic to use again on a later date.

Since there were going to be three ravenous young men at dinner, I bought six chicken breasts and boned them myself. This means that I've now got six bones in the fridge waiting for me to cook up some stock, but that is a story for later. I sliced my cutlets thinly and then dipped them in egg and seasoned breadcrumbs and pan fried them in hot vegetable oil. I did all this the night before so that I could serve a reasonably early dinner to Paul, his girlfriend Lauren and his roommates, Rob and Andrew. I also cut up the broccoli, and made the cheesecake. Lots and lots of prep work.

The next day I came home after work and packed up everything and hopped on the subway down to Paul's house. He picked up some bread to go with dinner, his roommate Andrew had some red wine, and Lauren bought some shredded mozzarella. I had already put the cutlets and sauce in a baking dish, so when I arrived I simply topped them with the cheese and popped them in the oven and got to work on the broccoli and salad.

After twenty minutes, I switched on the broiler and let the cheese get a little brown and bubbly. The chicken was a delicious saucy, cheesy mess.


chicken parmigiana with plenty of cheese and sauce

Andrew recently bought a gigantically awesome patio table for their roof, so we took the food upstairs and ate under the stars. It was awesome. I am so envious of their sweet roof set up, although I suppose I could technically set up something of the sort on mine, which is unlocked. Maybe someday.

dry rubbed ribs/zucchini and yellow squash with tomato sauce

dry rub barbecue

So couple of weeks ago I went home and my dad and I made dinner. My parents had ribs in the fridge, but we decided to try something new and try a dry rub recipe.

This turned out to be really easy. We used a lot of brown sugar mixed with cracked black pepper, kosher salt, cayenne pepper, paprika, cumin, red pepper flakes, garlic powder, nutmeg, mace and savory mix. Dad massaged the spice rub into the meat, let it sit in the fridge for an hour or two and then slowly grilled it to perfection.


that's the rub

Sweet, savory, spicy and delicious. No barbecue sauce required. I'm a girl who often hates ribs slathered in gloppy sticky sweet sauce, so these really were right up my alley.


zucchini in tomato sauce is a Cascone family favorite

We also made zucchini and summer sauce in tomato sauce. This is something my family has been making for years, and it's easy and delicious. Simply slice the zucchini and squash into centimeter thick rounds and simmer in your favorite tomato sauce. Serve with extra black pepper and grated romano cheese.


ribs, coleslaw, potato salad and slightly out of place zucchini in tomato sauce

Here's the whole dinner plate. As you can see we also had leftover coleslaw. You can also catch a glimpse of the potato salad with homemade mayo that I'll be talking about in my next post. I know that Nathan hasn't posted anything this month, but you'll all be stuck with me for at least two weeks longer. Boyfriend is off exploring Italy for the next two weeks, and I'm holding down the fort up in Harlem. Hopefully, this oppressive heat won't prevent me from keeping busy in the kitchen while he's gone!

master meals, week 8: tony mantuono's crespelle with ricotta and marinara

crespelle with ricotta and marinara sauce

So, Top Chef Masters ended its season last week, with Ethiopean born Swedish chef Marcus Samuelsson narrowly edging out Rick Moonen and Susur Lee. If you've been reading along, you may be thinking "hmm... this Master Meals series thingie didn't feature two of those three finalists." You'd be right, and I'm afraid that's not going to change. We kind of fell off the bandwagon the final two weeks of the season, partly because Marcus and Susur's food is a bit removed from our culinary comfort zones, and partially because I had a Yelp event with free food one Wednesday and that killed our momentum. So, we skipped cooking entirely the second to last week, and then last Wednesday we made chicken marsala instead of a master meal (we'll eventually get around to blogging about that too, I'm sure).

For now, I'm going to talk about this awesome dish by Tony Mantuono, Obama's favorite chef. Crespelle are really fun to make, like little crepes, only not quite as thin and therefore less delicate and difficult to perfect. The batter was particularly easy to prepare. Simply combine the wet ingredients (two eggs and three quarters cup milk) with the dry (three quarters cup flour and a half teaspoon salt), and then stir in a tablespoon of melted butter. Aside from the instructions to cover the crespelle batter and let it sit in the fridge for an hour, this recipe was really quick to prepare as well.

I fried the crespelle for three minutes each in a frying pan rubbed with an olive oil soaked paper towel. I wound up with only six of them, because I didn't have a quarter cup with which to measure the batter. They are like thin pancakes. Then Nathan and I spread each crespelle with a mix of ricotta, parmesan, parsley and cracked black peppper and folded them into quarters. Nate had made up some tasty tomato sauce, so we spread half of that in the bottom of our baking pan, and put the crespelles on top. Another layer of sauce, some parsley and extra grated cheese, and we simply popped the pan into the oven for 25 minutes.


oven baked crespelle

Nathan will disagree with me but I think this dish blows a simple lasagna, (which will also be making a blog appearance one of these days), out of the water. It's like an easy manicotti. So good!


getting ready to plate

braised pork chops pizzaiola

pesto and pork chop pizzaiola

My mom and I made this a couple weeks back. She handled the pesto, using the family recipe, and I took point on the pork chops. As you can see, my parent's ancient industrial strength blender creates a much silkier and smoother sauce than the rather chunky one I whipped up here in my apartment.

As for the pork chops, this was my first time making them this way, but pork chops pizziaola is sort of Aunt Cathy's specialty, and she's always talking about how easy they are. Additionally, Tenli had made a really tasty variation on the theme back in the fall based on a New York Times recipe.

The basic idea is simple: season and sear the chops quickly on each side, and remove them from the pan. Then saute up some red onions, garlic and fresh herbs. My mom really doesn't like rosemary, (a damn shame in my opinion), so we used basil and parsley instead. Then you toss a can of chopped tomatoes in the pan, and let that break down a bit. Add the chops back into the pan and pile the tomato mixture on top. Cover the pan and let braise in a 350° oven for 15 minutes.

They turned out almost perfect. Oddly, the first bite that Dad and I both had was really quite dry and tough. He accused me of overcooking them, and I was ready to concede the point. However, the second bite was tender and juicy, as was the rest of the chop. It was just strange that we both fell victim to the same anomaly to begin our meal.

I think I like breaded pork chops a little better, but a nice braised chop is definitely a pleasant change of pace. I suggest you try your pork chops pizziaola sometime soon!

rosemary brown butter soda bread

easy soda bread

So when I saw this recipe for a soda bread with black pepper, oats, brown butter, buttermilk and rosemary, I instantly wanted to make it. At the time I had some buttermilk in the fridge leftover from my traditional Irish soda bread, and some rosemary from this amazing Roman pork chop recipe that Nathan needs to blog for y'all. Of course, by the time I got around to making it, I no longer trusted the buttermilk (how do you even tell when that stuff goes bad?), but I just stirred in a tablespoon of white vinegar to some whole milk from the food co-op, and I was good to go. I also used some half white half whole wheat flour from the food co-op, so I wound up with a brown loaf. It was pretty cool.


half white flour from my CSA

This recipe is definitely a keeper. Easy, tasty, and a little bit rustic and different-- what's not to like? It was a bit crumbly, but if you're interested in making bread but don't want to mess around with yeast, a soda bread is a great option. No kneading needed. This one only has a few more ingredients than the traditional Irish one I posted for St. Patrick's day, and is a great every day loaf. The browned butter, the freshly ground pepper, the rosemary, and then oats... And all you have to do is mix the dry ingredients and then add the wet ones! Good stuff. I did worry that my loaf was too wet and sticky, but I added a smidge more flour and it baked up just fine. I initially forgot to brush the tops with egg white, which was definitely unnecessary and kind of became a mess, so I wouldn't fret over that step either.

Mostly I've just been eating it on its own, but tonight we ate some sliced, toasted, and slathered with butter. We also made tortellini with a rosemary tomato sauce with jarred tomatoes from the food co-op, garlic, fresh parsley and a little red pepper for a kick. I was worried it might be too spicy, but Nathan has a deft hand with the spices, and the sauce was great. I also bought some mesclun and made up a salad with scallions and my previously blogged new favorite dressing. It was a good dinner.


soda bread with dinner

a simple supper

tortellini in tomato sauce, sauteed spinach and a fresh mozzarella garlic crostini

This is the kind of meal I love best: delicious cheesy pasta and a nice fresh vegetable. Normally, I try to get my protein in there with some meat, but sometimes it's nice to have a lighter meal, and one without meat can be just as filling.

This meal was pretty much the offspring of my previously featured pizza party. I had initially planned to make spinach ricotta pizza, but didn't have time to saute the pizza before my guests arrived, and it just would have been too much to handle with five other people in the kitchen. However, the spinach went to good use in this meal. As you can see in the picture, it is just barely cooked. I rinsed off the leaves and then cooked them on medium heat with garlic and oil until just wilted. If there is a lot of spinach, it make take some conscientious stirring to ensure that it all cooks evenly, but even then this shouldn't take more than five minutes.

The main dish of the evening was the tortellini, which I served with the same sauce I had made for the pizzas. Normally, I make my sauce by sauteing garlic and olive oil, and then adding chopped canned tomatoes, cracked black pepper, and parsley and basil, if I have them. I deviated from the usual routine when I found this recipe, a darling of the food blog world, just days before hosting the event. The sauce is incredibly simple: half a stick of butter, and half an onion, unchopped, simmer with a can of whole tomatoes. That's all there is to it, no chopping involved! It was really quite tasty, and the butter certainly gave it an added richness. Of course, I tossed in a clove or two of garlic, because I felt wrong making tomato sauce without it. When it came to the end, I felt bad discarding the garlic and onion before serving, so I tried mashing it up with the tomatoes. If I made this again, I'd probably take it out and smear it onto some Italian bread. My only complaint with the recipe was that I felt that it wasn't as good the second day. I probably will continue to stick to my usual sauce in the future, but if tomato sauce intimidates you, this is a great one to try making, as I can't imagine screwing this one up!

tomato sauce a simmerin'

The Italian bread was also leftover from the earlier gathering, as pretty much no one had eaten it the night before. I roasted a couple of garlic cloves in olive oil with salt, pepper and a little grated cheese. This is absolutely a divine way to eat garlic or onions, as it makes them much mellower and sweeter, without totally eradicating the strong flavors that make them so delicious in the first place. I melted some bocconcini on top of the bread, and smeared the garlic clove on top. With some cracked black pepper on top, this was really simple and tasty and the perfect final component to a completely satisfying meal.

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

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!