Not Derby Pie » easy-as-a-1-2-3

Maple-Roasted Pears

rivka — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 19:30:55 +0000

‘Tis the season for cookies, and lately I’ve felt so bombarded by different shapes, sizes, flavors, and varieties, it’s hard to focus on much else. Ok, obviously I’ve still found time for applesauce cake and gingersnap pear cranberry crisp. But what I’m trying to say is, there have also been cookies. Lots and lots of cookies. An embarrassing number, some of you would think (if I were willing to estimate my personal intake, which I am not).

I find it difficult to forgo cakes and cookies for lower-key desserts year-round, and this time of year, it’s especially hard. But last week, after fiddling with the “surprise me” function on Deb’s blog, I stumbled on a recipe for roasted pears that caught this cookie-loving lady’s attention. The pears looked like they were melting into the baking dish, coated with a syrup of vanilla beans, sugar, and lemon. I wanted to scoop them right out of the screen.

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Perfect Chai

rivka — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 16:22:38 +0000

The leaves are falling, yellow and burnt orange, into oddly balmy air. It’s not nearly as cold as “late November” suggests it should be. No scarf or hat for me – not even a real winter coat yet. Just a blazer, some low boots, and a hankering for the real chill to set in.

We spent thanksgiving in Michigan, where I was certain we’d have some seasonally appropriate weather. But folks, even Detroit was definitively mild. Aside from plenty of rain, the Michigan air barely even could be called brisk.

So yes, I’m impatient for real, honest fall. I’m sure I’ll laugh bitterly if I chance to reread this post in February, but for now, I’m ready for real fall. In the meantime, I’m cheating the seasons a bit: well ahead of the weather’s lazy schedule, I’ve busted out the tea leaves. Folks, I’m making chai.

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Twice-Baked Sweet Potatoes

rivka — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 16:59:53 +0000

I’m back, in the nick of time, with one last side dish to grace your Thanksgiving table (because really, can you ever have enough sides?) By now, you’re probably squared away with your stuffing, your Turkey, and those pies. So here’s an idea for what to do with all those sweet potatoes. I wouldn’t call it a traditional dish, but it’s certainly a play on tradition.

I’ve always loved twice-baked potatoes, with their crisp skin and just enough potato inside to cushion the cheesy filling. So why not twice-bake sweet potatoes? Yes, their flesh is less starchy, and their skins are harder to crisp up. But when you succeed — and you will succeed – you will reap the rewards of hot, sweet, crunchy, soft, sweet ‘taters like you’ve never had’em before.

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Brussels Sprouts with Caraway Seeds

rivka — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 15:58:36 +0000

Ohh, brussels sprouts. The unsung hero of the Thanksgiving table. Have your turkey, eat as many sweet potatoes as you’d like; when the maple syrup is dripping down your chin, the marshmallows bursting from your jowls, and the cranberry sauce shmeared bright red across your plate, you will have a moment – everyone has a moment – when the sweetness of it all, the sheer quantity of sugar, exhausts you. At that moment, you’ll reach for the bowl of brussels sprouts, grateful that something on the table that’s purely savory. Thank goodness for brussels sprouts.

here’s the thing about sprouts recipes, though. Lots involve that very maple syrup that coats your yams. Or apples. Or pears (guilty as charged). Those are delicious – I’m not criticizing! – but if you take your turkey in a sweet direction (here’s one recipe I’m particularly excited about that looks pretty sweet), you’ll want a foil for all that sugar. So if I were making Tday dinner this year, I’d go as simple as it gets. Just some olive oil, salt and pepper – and the secret star ingredient: caraway seeds.

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Kale Salad with Avocado Dressing

rivka — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 15:47:43 +0000

This is the latest in NDP’s Weekday Lunch series, your one and only source into the scandalous lives of my tupperware. For earlier Weekday Lunch posts, check this out.

I’m a big fan of kale salads. They’re a pop of green in a season where not much is; they basically never wilt; and given how healthy they are, it’s hard not to feel righteous eating one.

My usual kale salad combines lacinato kale – the long, bumpy leaves that are almost glamorous in texture, also known as dinosaur kale – with pine nuts, raisins or currants, and shards of Parmigiano Reggiano cheese. It’s the sort of salad that’s good now, better later. My friend (and author of various guest posts on NDP) Jeremy pointed out that over time, as the kale wilts, it takes on a texture almost like seaweed, which is quite pleasant.

Last week, in the mood for kale salad, I opened the fridge to find I was fresh out of lacinato. I did have a bunch of regular curly-leaf kale, but I knew it would take a thicker, more serious dressing to tame those wiry leaves. Where did I turn? The humble avocado.

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Ginger Brownies

rivka — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 14:15:41 +0000

Brownie perfection is in the eye of the beholder. Some like a moist, chewy brownie. (Others inexplicably prefer the cakey kind, but I’m not judging.) Katherine Hepburn liked brownies so chocolatey, they were black – but I’ve also met strange folks who don’t want to be hit over the head by the chocolate. (Again, not judging. Kinda.)

The brownie debate extends quite far: even Duncan Hines lists two options on their packaged brownie mix – one egg for chewy brownies, two for cake-like brownies.

Me, I like a brownie that’s moist and chewy – but it’s important to me that they hold to hold their shape when sliced. Mushy brownies have a time and a place – midnight or later, straight out of the pan, eaten alone or with someone I like a whole lot. For the more civilized occasions, give me a brownie that slices up nicely.

In the past, I’ve looked to Alice Medrich and Dorie Greenspan, who have developed recipes for truly bittersweet, moist brownies. Neither of my standby favorites have any additions, which can disrupt the otherwise smooth texture of good brownies.

But I’m not a total purist. I’ve always been a fan of peppermint brownies, and just as curious about the supporting role other flavors might be able to play. So yesterday, I pulled a stack of cookbooks off the shelf and began looking for inspiration: I wanted to make ginger brownies.

That expedition ended with a thud. I couldn’t find anything I was excited to make. So I turned to the interwebs, and quickly found myself a Martha recipe that looked mighty promising. Spiced with ground ginger, nutmeg, and cloves, they suggested prominent fall flavor but didn’t look too overpowering.

And here I am, blogging abut the recipe, so yes, friends. They were every bit as good as I’d hoped. The texture of these brownies comes pretty close to perfect, for me at least. Chewy and moist, but firm enough to stand up to a knife. I topped them with some of the lovely ginger salt I received from Marx Foods a while back for some sort of contest (I forget the context, but I’m pretty sure it was open to everyone, and they’re certainly not paying me to discuss it here). I was enamored enough of the topping that I’m encouraging you to do something similar below. It’s simple, really: combine ground ginger with coarse salt. Alternatively, snag the ginger salt from Marx Foods. It’s – er – worth its salt.

Ginger Brownies
adapted from Martha Stewart
makes 9 large brownies or 12 smaller brownies (1 8×8 pan)

Note: The ginger salt is out of stock, but equally wonderful is the espresso salt. Try it! If you don’t have fancy flavored salt, just take 1/2 teaspoon of flaky salt in a bowl, add a pinch of ground ginger, and stir until combined. Sprinkle sparingly over the brownies. If you’re not keen on that fuss, just use regular flaky salt.

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, plus more for baking dish
3 ounces bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped
1 cup sugar
2/3 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon grated peeled fresh ginger
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon coarse salt, plus 1/2 teaspoon for sprinkling
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Butter an 8-inch square baking dish. Line bottom with parchment paper, allowing 2 inches to hang over 2 sides. Butter parchment.

Melt butter and chocolate together in a small saucepan over medium-low heat, stirring until smooth. Remove from heat and allow to cool.

In a large bowl, combine dry ingredients and spices. Stir to combine fully. Add eggs, vanilla, and cooled chocolate mixture, and stir to fully combine.

Pour batter into prepared dish and smooth top with a rubber spatula. Sprinkle sparingly with either ginger salt or regular flaky salt. Bake until a cake tester inserted into center comes out with moist crumbs, 30 to 35 minutes. Let cool in pan on a wire rack 15 minutes. Lift out, and let cool completely on rack. Cut into 8 squares or 12 rectangles. Brownies can be stored in an airtight container at room temperature up to 4 days.

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Beef Stew with Vadouvan

rivka — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 15:54:49 +0000

I didn’t believe it was possible to make a flavorful beef stew without beef stock, but this recipe proved me wrong. An unassuming combination of cheap stew meat, green beans, tomatoes, and spices come together on the stove and cook low and slow, turning into something distinctly more than the sum of its parts. The green beans melt into lusciousness while, miraculously, maintaining their texture through hours of cooking. And the tomatoes become a complex, silky sauce that coats the beef and does wonders for a bowl of hot rice.

I adapted this stew from a Food52 recipe that, quite frankly, needed no adapting. It calls for coriander and cumin, which I used in moderation, and which are quite lovely. However, I also added plenty of vadouvan, an intriguing blend combining many of the spices in curry – cumin, tumeric, mustard seeds – with more French spices like shallots and nutmeg. It’s positively seductive, and it works magic on this stew.

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Pesto Frittata Bites

rivka — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 14:58:35 +0000

We spent this morning at a birthday brunch for our friend Matt. I’ve dubbed his wife “the hostess with the mostess plus,” because she’s simply the best hostess around. She welcoms friends and strangers alike into their home, and makes everyone feel like family. She and Matt even open their home to the community, year after year. But at the heart of the matter, “the hostess with the mostess plus” knows how to throw a party. When she received her doctorate, she threw a soiree that involved a live jazz ensemble, a chocolate fountain, and crepes to order, made by her late father, whom we all miss very much.

I was asked to bring an egg dish, which usually means a frittata. But when you go to brunch at the home of the hostess with the mostess plus, you best bring something real nice. So I went all fancy on you: I tucked my frittata recipe into mini-muffin cups. Whoa! Stop the presses.

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Easy Eggplant Curry

rivka — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 15:20:04 +0000

Somehow, D and I were hosted for all of our Rosh Hashana meals. Five times, we found ourselves in good friends’ homes, ripping off pieces of round, honey-dunked challah, and savoring slices of apples picked as nearby as Maryland, and as far as a friend’s hometown of Omaha. Five times, we ate way more than we needed to, fought to stop ourselves from taking one more piece of mushroom tart, one more spoonful of ethereal fennel soup, one more scoop of squash gratin, one more slice of my mom’s famous carrot kugel, one more bite of toasted coconut ice cream. Needless to say, we’re pretty stuffed.

(Another highlight, while we’re on the topic: my mom made a sweet-savory noodle kugel with feta. Talk about creative! I’m going to need that recipe.)

Alas, the languid pace and gluttonous eating of the past three days can’t go on indefinitely. There’s work – a new job, for one of us – right around the corner. And while, after weeks of working too hard and having little time for myself, it was great to not have to cook for this holiday, it also means that the fridge is strangely free of leftovers. Needless to say, I had to rectify that situation.

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My Israeli Salad

rivka — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 17:07:20 +0000

If you ask D about my eating habits, she’ll not hesitate a moment before telling you that they’re strange. Among what she deems my more odd tendencies is my affinity for salad in the morning. She – and most everyone else – like starting the day with oatmeal, yogurt, pancakes. (I do, too. Not sure how else to explain this, this, this, and, you know, this whole category.) But I’m also quite content to make breakfast from chopped vegetables, some avocado, a squeeze of lemon, and a hunk of feta cheese.

That’s what I did while living in Israel. If I wasn’t running out the door with a bottle of drinkable goat’s milk yogurt in hand, I was frequently making this salad in the mornings. Frankly, I was making a version of this salad nearly three times a day.

Classic Israeli salad doesn’t have feta or avocado. It’s just tomatoes, cucumber, parsley, lemon, and salt. That’s good, too – but this is better. It’s more luxurious, and more filling. Serve it with pita and some hummus or labneh, and you’ve got a complete meal. For years, this has been my Israeli salad. I’ll happily stuff it into a falafel sandwich, just like real Israeli salad, but I’ll also pile it on wheat toast, taking things in a slightly different (but still delicious) direction.

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How to Use (Up) Zucchini

rivka — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 14:55:47 +0000

Friends, the zucchini glut is nearly over. Those plants have practically exhausted themselves these past few months. Before you know it, we’ll be talking apple pie. But we’ve still got a week or two more of zucchini overflow, and I thought I’d share a couple delicious ways to put zucchini excess to good use.

These are recipes I’ve been making all summer, and you should certainly take the opportunity to make them while zucchini plants are still producing. Lest you think we’re only talking about stir fry or gratin, I’ve got you covered for brunch and snacktime, too.

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Mediterranean Lentil Salad

rivka — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 14:55:08 +0000

With the plentiful tomato salads and the peach cobblers of a good East Coast summer, lentils are often forgotten, relegated to the soups, stews, and curries of colder months. Such has been the case in our home. We’ve plowed through pint after pint of beautiful blackberries (making just a couple of these). We’ve eaten our weight in red, orange, yellow, even purple cherry tomatoes (and fried our fair share of green ones; if you’re clicking over, check out those vintage NDP photos! My, how far we’ve come…). But the lentils, they linger in the pantry, waiting for the air to grow colder.

The lentils were hiding, for sure. But last week, I peered deep into my pantry, looking for items begging to be used – the neglected cans or bags of whatever legume I felt inspired to buy, however many months ago. Blame it on the new home purchase: I’m already twitching at the thought of migrating my whole kitchen worth of stuff, so the leaner, the better. Also: last week, I was reading about Slow Food USA’s $5 Challenge, a call to food lovers to “take back the value meal” by gathering friends and family and eating a meal that costs $5 a head. Lentils give some of the best bang-for-buck of any food item out there. They’re inexpensive, full of protein, and easy to make. Also, easy to make taste delicious.

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Peach Tomato Salad

rivka — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 15:54:32 +0000

I get as excited as the next girl about making zucchini gratin, corn soup, peach cobbler, etc. Never was there a better time for produce than smack in the middle of summer. The downside, of course, is that some days, I’m too pooped to patchke. I’d rather just stand over the sink, peach in hand, and let the juice dribble down my chin as I indulge in an effortless, delicious, afternoon snack.

This salad is for those days. It’s for the other days, too; but when the heat has gotten the best of you, you’ll be thankful for something this good, this seasonal, that requires so little actual movement on your part (the better to sit near the fan and let the sweat evaporate. You know what I’m talking about.)

When the peaches and tomatoes are as good as they are right now (this very moment! Get thee to the market, pronto!), they need nothing. They do benefit, however, from a drizzle of fine olive oil, a sprinkling of sea salt, and a couple drops of reduced balsamic vinegar or saba (my favorite ingredient ever: reduced grape must. You can get it at Italian grocery stores and on Amazon). That’s all, folks.

Peach Tomato Salad
serves 2

2 juicy peaches, peeled (probably need to use a paring knife if they’re as juicy as they should be)
1 pint good cherry or grape tomatoes
a few tiny basil or mint leaves
3 tablespoons fine olive oil, preferably a fruity one
flaky sea salt
2 teaspoons reduced balsamic vinegar or saba; pomegranate syrup would also be good

Peel peaches and slice each peach into 6 wedges. Halve tomatoes. Arrange on platter, and top with mint or basil leaves.

Drizzle oil over salad, and sprinkle lightly with flaky salt. Drizzle the vinegar or saba with a very light hand.

Either serve immediately (fine), or allow salad to sit for 10 minutes. Tomatoes and peaches will exude their liquid and seem, impossibly, juicier. Eat up.

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The Negroni

rivka — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 14:30:10 +0000

I rarely post about drinks in this space. Truth is, until recently I hadn’t a clue how to mix a good drink. My bar was “stocked” with two bottles of Kahlua, a half-empty jug of Bailey’s, and the brandy and sherry I use in cooking. For a nice, hard drink, I went around the corner and plopped my derriere at a bar. So it was.

I’m pretty sure it was Jen, from Last Night’s Dinner, who, in a sort of roundabout way, kickstarted my newfound intrigue in liquor and the cool things you can do with it. (I sound a little bit like I just had my 21st birthday, I know.) It’s ironic, since Jen’s husband, Mike, is the real drink expert. He blogs at A Dash of Bitters and writes a drink column for Serious Eats Drinks. But it was Jen who got me started. Earlier this year, Jen posted a recipe on Food52 for linguine with sardines, tomato, and fennel. That dish became one of my addictions this past winter, and I made it probably once a week. It’s a beautiful recipe, in which long pasta meets melted fennel, bright tomato, briny sardines, toasted bread crumbs, and…dry vermouth.

Vermouth, I came to learn, is a fortified wine. There’s sweet vermouth and dry vermouth. I’ve come to think that in cooking, dry vermouth is to white wine what shallots are to onions: more complex, more buttery, more exciting. I still cook with plenty of white wine, but especially in savory dishes, I turn more and more to dry vermouth.

Then there’s sweet vermouth, which has about half as sweet as port and, again, fortified with various herbs and spices. I’ve used it in chicken dishes to impart a gentle sweetness with plenty of flavor. The stuff is really, really good.

In my urban kitchen, where we’re perpetually in negotiations about the necessity of every utensil or appliance, the vermouth functioned as a new toy. It was great in food, but I wondered about its potential in, of all places, the glass.

I started playing with vermouth-based cocktails, this and this. But I have both a terrible memory and a penchant for not following recipes so well, and when those two things combine, you’ve got yourself a terrible mixologist. So at the end of the day, I’ve come to favor a cocktail that’s as easy to memorize as it is to quaff: the Negroni.

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Zucchini and Snap Peas with Sesame Oil

rivka — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 18:21:07 +0000

In some sense, it’s hard to come up with anything insightful to say about a dish containing four ingredients, one of which is salt and the other three of which are in this post’s title. On the other hand, one taste had me going on and on about how simple, how delicious, it all was. It’s a dish of contradictions: complex flavor from very few ingredients, a celebration of the bounty of summer with none of the fuss involved in, say, sour cherry pie.

We’re talking about zucchini and snap peas, two of summer’s greatest-hit vegetables. If you’ve seen those very small zucchini at the market and wondered what to do with them, this is the perfect recipe for showing off their shape. (If you can’t find baby zucchini, regular zucchini sliced into thick coins will work just fine.) I’ve spent many summers sauteing zucchini coins in butter; never once did I consider ditching the butter in favor of water. (Ditching butter? Would I ever? No.) But this is an exception: when you’re dealing with summer’s freshest vegetables, at the peak of the season, a little salted water is all you need.

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Sour Cherry Compote

rivka — Sun, 26 Jun 2011 14:13:34 +0000

It seems my latest attempt to test the temper of this bearable summertime weather has, gleefully, been ignored. DC persists in being comfortable. In June! No, I’m not complaining.

Instead, I’m reveling in the joy of walking down to the farmers’ market on Sunday mornings after a workout, all hot and prepared to stay that way, only to encounter 80-degree breezes and precious little humidity. Sacks full of produce, I can walk home without needing the day to recover. Call it the tyranny of low expectations, but it’s quite a thrill.

The nice (for summer) weather makes the bounty of East Coast produce an even greater bonus. To wit: I turned on my oven this week to make sour cherry hand pies, and guess what? No one fainted. Success. I’ll have a recipe for that soon.

For now, there’s this lovely compote, which you should make not next week, not tomorrow, but right now, before sour cherries vanish. It all happens so quickly, and I don’t want you to miss out. The beauty of this compote is that it’s a cinch to make, and it’ll keep in your fridge for weeks, extending the fleeting season of my favorite summer fruit.

You might wonder when you’ll have occasion to use a compote, but trust me: if it’s in your fridge, you’ll suddenly find ample uses. Over scones or pancakes; alongside grilled meats; swirled into yogurt; spooned over vanilla ice cream. If those possibilities aren’t sufficient, you could eat it straight from the jar. Or use it in these wonderfully sloppy sour cherry pies. Think of fruit compote as a headstart to all other desserts. Crumbles, pies, muffins, ice creams — all of these would benefit from some compote mixed in.

Sour Cherry Compote
adapted from Karen DeMasco’s The Craft of Baking

4 cups (1 lb.) stemmed, pitted sour cherries (fresh or frozen)
3/4 cup sugar
juice of 1 lime (or lemon)

Set a strainer over a metal bowl.

Combine cherries, sugar, and lime juice in a small saucepan and set over medium high heat. Cook — watching carefully, because it will inevitably bubble over the minute you turn away — until mixture bubbles and starts to foam, and cherries are soft, about 7 minutes. Pour mixture into strainer set over bowl; cherries will separate from syrup. Pour syrup back into sauce pan, and transfer cherries to the metal bowl.

Cook syrup over medium-low heat (you’re looking for a simmer here) until reduced by half, about 10 minutes. Remove from heat and cool about 10 minutes more.

Put cherries into a glass jar, and pour syrup over cherries. Refrigerate. Compote will keep in the fridge for a few weeks, if it lasts that long.

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Gujarati Mango Soup

rivka — Fri, 27 May 2011 14:49:56 +0000

Initially posted on The Jew and the Carrot: www.jcarrot.org.

Walk into any Jewish household on a Friday night, and you’ll have an instant window into that family’s food legacy. The Syrian table is piled high with ka’aks, zucchinis and eggplants stuffed with lamb and beef, beautiful molded rice with blanched almonds, and my favorite, lahmacun, those wonderful flatbreads topped with tamarind-and-tomato drenched ground meat. The Eastern Europeans have lokshen and cabbage, noodle kugel, gefilte fish, and of course, cholent. But come over to my house, and you might be confused: we’ll start with, say, a Moroccan soup called harira. The pièce de résistance, if I’m lucky, is huachinango a la Veracruzana, my favorite preparation of red snapper in a Mexican tomato sauce with onions, olives, currants, hot peppers, and cinnamon. A side of the Indian eggplant curry baingan bartha might round out the meal, and for dessert, my mother’s homemade chocolate croissants. If you’re following along, that makes one American Jew, born and raised in Washington, DC, with relatives from across Eastern Europe, who, along with her mother, is building a cooking legacy on Indian curry, Mexican fish, Moroccan soup, and French pastry.

I don’t come from a strong cooking tradition. It’s possible my great grandmothers slaved over some top-notch borscht, or — in the case of the piece of my family that’s been in the US for seven generations — some excellent apple pie. But I wouldn’t know. My grandmother, who grew up in Chicago, didn’t cook much at all. My Bubby, who grew up in New York and has spent most of her life in Richmond, VA, used to make an excellent Thanksgiving dinner, but her cooking didn’t have a particular perspective or core list of key ingredients.

Color me jealous: I’ve always wanted to come from one of those families with a strong culinary tradition. I’ve longed for native staples – the sorts of ingredients you always have on hand in multiple forms and in massive quantities, that find their way into everything: the Italians’ olive oil and tomatoes; the Indians’ garlic, ginger, and chilies; and so on.

So we weren’t bequeathed a strong culinary heritage by our relatives or our culture; that hasn’t stopped us from building our own. My mother has spent years accruing knowledge of different cultures’ cuisines, acquiring a taste for spice, learning to achieve that balance of spicy, sour, salty, and sweet that makes food — of any origin — great. And ever since I learned to cook, I’ve been trying to follow in her footsteps. Yes, we’re creating our own culinary legacy. Our legacy uses lemon in copious quantities; it doesn’t skimp on the chile; it favors things with pools of zesty tomato-based sauces to be sopped up with good bread; and it always includes something sweet to finish things off.

But there’s more. We love olives, capers, and anchovies, individually or all together in a tapenade that’d make a cook in Provence swoon. And we love Indian flavors; we’ve spent many a meal tasting curries two, three, four times in a row, to decipher their ingredients one by one. As I served an Indian-spiced chilled mango soup to my guests on Friday night — its pale orange surface flecked with black mustard seeds and buoying a dollop of spicy green chutney — I felt connected to a cooking heritage. The people may not be my own people, but the legacy of Indian cooking — the boldness with flavors, the embrace of real, sweat-inducing spice, the mixing of hot and cold together in the same dish — is one I have come to love, and to take as my own. Not being born into a strong cooking tradition may be a blessing in disguise, after all.

Gujarati Mango Soup with Green Chutney
Adapted from a recipe in Amanda Hesser’s The New York Times Essential Cookbook

After initially making this soup, I was concerned it would be cloying, even in small doses. I’d added some lime juice, but it still tasted quite sweet. On a whim, I made this green chutney (below), and its fresh, green heat complements the soup perfectly.

2 tablespoons chickpea flour
1/8 teaspoon ground turmeric
3/4 teaspoon ground cumin
3/4 teaspoon ground coriander
1/2 cup plain whole milk yogurt (Greek is best)
3 cups canned mango pulp or mashed fresh mango pulp (1 mango yields between 3/4 and 1 cup of pulp)
1 1/4 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon sugar (may need more if using fresh mangos)
1 jalapeno pepper, chopped (I used all the seeds. If you prefer less spice, omit seeds and membrane)
2 tablespoons peanut or corn oil
Generous pinch ground asafoetida
1/2 teaspoon whole brown mustard seeds
1/2 teaspoon whole cumin seeds
2 whole hot dried red chilies
1/8 teaspoon whole fenugreek seeds
10 fresh curry leaves (optional)
Juice of 1 lime

Put the chickpea flour, turmeric, and ground cumin in a bowl. Fill a measuring cup with 1/2 cup of water, and add a couple tablespoons to the flour mixture, stirring carefully until the flour is a smooth paste with no clumps.

Add more water very slowly, ensuring an even consistency as you stir.

Once enough water has been added that the chickpea flour has been fully incorporated into the liquid with no lumps, add the rest of the water and stir to combine. Whisk in yogurt, mango, and 2 more cups water. Add salt, sugar, and fresh chilies. Mix well.

Put oil in a heavy-bottomed medium pot over medium heat. When oil is very hot, add the asafoetida, and then — in quick succession — the mustard seeds, cumin seeds, dried chilies, fenugreek seeds, and curry leaves (if using). Have a splatter screen on hand: the mustard seeds will pop almost immediately after being added.

As soon as you have added the above ingredients, remove from heat and add mango mixture. Stir to combine, return to medium heat, and simmer for 5 minutes, stirring. Then remove from heat, cover, and allow to steep for 30 minutes.

At this point, you can either reheat the soup to serve warm, or do as I did, and refrigerate it to be served cold. Either way, strain the soup through a coarse sieve, then spoon some of the smaller seeds from the strainer back into the soup. Immediately before serving, stir the lime juice into the soup.

Serve soup in small bowls, with a spoonful of the chutney in each.

Spicy Green Chutney
Adapted from a recipe by Madhur Jaffrey

2 tablespoons lemon or lime juice (lime is preferable)
1 small tomato, diced
3/4 teaspoon salt
3 fresh hot green chilies, such as bird’s eye or jalapeno (can start with 2 and add to taste)
2/3 cup fresh chopped cilantro
1/3 cup fresh chopped mint
1/2 cup grated coconut, fresh or frozen and defrosted

This chutney can be made rustic in a mortar and pestle, or smooth in a blender.

Combine 3 tablespoons water, lime juice, tomatoes, salt, and chilies. Mash or blend until combined or smooth.

Add cilantro and mint; mash together or blend until smooth.

Finally, add coconut and blend or mix more, until chutney is fully mixed or completely smooth. Serve cold.

Chutney will keep in the refrigerator for a few days, but will keep for months in the freezer.

Many of the ingredients in each of these recipes are available online at Kalustyans.com.

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Simplest Asparagus with Fresh Peas

rivka — Wed, 04 May 2011 13:10:45 +0000

From the archives, just in time for my favorite vegetable to hit the market. Enjoy!

The markets are back open, the cherry blossoms are in full bloom, and I can almost forgive the swarms of tourists and the row of port-o-potties that totally block the view along the tidal basin, because spring has sprung! Thrills.

After a long winter of stews and soups, rice dishes and noodle bowls, I crave the fresh simplicity of spring produce. When a Sunday at the market sends me home with asparagus, fresh shelling peas, rhubarb, and (cross your fingers!) ramps, I try to prepare meals in a no-frills manner, letting the vegetables speak for themselves. Why kill fresh peas with a gloppy sauce? Why bury asparagus in soup or risotto? Leave those more involved, less spare recipes for another time. These first spring vegetables should be celebrated, I tell you.

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Strozzapreti with Broccoli Rabe

rivka — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 23:27:42 +0000

I’ve already revealed my affinity for curly pasta shapes. With strozzapreti, I’ve found the apex of my obsession. Strozzapreti literally means “priest choker.” Not the type I generally keep in my company, but for these wiry hand-made noodles, I’ll make an exception. They’re thin at the ends, thick in the middle, and tightly curled. Even when fully cooked, they keep a deliciously chewy texture.

I like strozzapreti with tomatoes. (I like everything with tomatoes.) My usual approach to these slurpy little noodles is a take on this dish, an old-school NYT recipe. But sometimes, especially when tomatoes aren’t in season, I opt for something more winter-friendly.

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Dutch Babies and New Years Day Brunch Ideas

rivka — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 19:03:02 +0000

updated from the archives: with New Years Day quickly approaching, I’m starting to think about breakfast in a serious way. Here’s a smattering of good ideas to make on my favorite lazy morning of the year.

December 31 is nearly upon us! I’m expecting thousands of drunken belligerent psychos to descend on my neighborhood next week, and if you think I’m excited, I’m actually going elsewhere. Nothing I hate more than Adams Morgan on New Years Eve. But New Years morning is another story entirely. The streets are quiet, the air is cold and still, the oven is on and the coffee is brewing. I love waking up on New Years Day to total silence, enjoying yummy but easy breakfast and hot tea in my bathrobe, and being altogether lazy.

Even if you’re like me and breakfast/brunch is your thing, I’m sure you feel me that cooking on New Years morning isn’t exactly an appealing thought. Especially if you’re hosting tomorrow morning, surely you want something easy to make, but with big wow-factor. A Dutch Baby is just the thing. It’s a big, floppy, eggy pancake that puffs up beautifully in the oven; pull it out, top with some stewed fruit and a dusting of powdered sugar, and ta-da! Perfect breakfast entree. It takes 20 minutes to bake and about 15 seconds to mix up. Can’t complain about that prep time, now can you?

Just in case a hot, fluffy, fruit-topped pancake isn’t your thing (but really, who are we kidding?) I’ve included links to some other good New Years brunch recipes below. Have yourselves a safe and rockin’ evening, and a very Happy New Year!

New Years Day Brunch Ideas:

Rich and creamy apricot-stuffed french toast
Lazy, boozy french toast casserole
Easy vintage breakfast biscuits
Ever-popular and dead easy shakshuka
Any kind of frittata, any kind at all
Blackberry and pear clafoutis — perfect for winter

There are plenty more where those came from — just run a quick search through my breakfast-and-brunch category and see what pops up.

Dutch Babies
basic recipe adapted from Lara at Cook and Eat
serves 2-4 (if it’s a main course for 4, double the recipe and make in two separate pans)

4 eggs
generous pinch of salt
1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup milk
2 T unsalted butter

Preheat the oven to 425F.

Whisk the eggs with the pinch of salt until they just begin to get fluffy. Gradually whisk in the milk and flour and continue whisking until there are no lumps.

Melt the butter in a 8-inch cast iron pan. Then, pour the egg mixture over the butter. Move the pan immediately to the hot oven. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, or until it puffs up over the edges of the pan and is a rich golden brown on the edges.

Top with any kind of stewed fruit, or even good-quality preserves, and finish with a dusting of powdered sugar. I used poached quince that I had leftover — delicious.

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Curried Kohlrabi and Apple Slaw

rivka — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 15:00:10 +0000

Every year, sometime in late November, we turn on our heat, move the sweaters to the top drawer, dig up our tights and fleece-lined slippers, …and stop eating salads.

It’s silly, really. Once the cold sets in, and my cravings for fresh, red tomatoes are a faint mystery, all I can think about is stew and soup, tea and cider. Might a salad go perfectly with my black bean chili? Why yes, yes it would. Do I make one? No, no I don’t. The chill kills my appetite for fresh leaves, replaces it with a deep-belly hunger for soy-marinated kale and spicy, savory pasta dishes like this one. But I’m right on cue. Around December, I suddenly remember winter vegetable slaw, and everything changes.

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Mushroom Conserva

rivka — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 15:57:14 +0000

This is part of a series on great side dishes for Thanksgiving and year-round. The first of the series can be found here.

To my mind, there are two foods whose flavor profiles are so diverse, they can taste like just about anything. One is cheese, which can taste sweet or salty, buttery or nutty or mild, grassy or spicy or altogether funky, like hot peppers or red wine, pure raw milk or bay leaves. The other? Mushrooms.

The buttons taste bland, but when you get into chanterelles that taste and smell of butter and honey, oyster mushrooms with briny undertones, and morels that sing of smoke and springtime, you’re talking serious flavor diversity. My favorites are honeycap mushrooms, which smell and taste like honey with chocolate undertones. I could literally sit for days with my nose deep in a basket of honeycaps.

The sweet taste of honeycaps comes at a price: $15 a box, to be exact. With few exceptions, I steer clear, making a b-line for the criminis, shiitakes, and maybe some chanterelles. Criminis are pretty plain, shiitakes slightly less so; when I serve these to company, I’m looking to maximize their flavor and increase their shelf life in case there are leftovers. For this, I turn to mushroom conserva. It comes from one of my new favorite cookbooks, Thomas Keller’s Ad Hoc at Home.

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Green Beans with Horseradish-Mustard Vinaigrette

rivka — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 15:58:51 +0000

This is the first of a series of posts about great sides for Thanksgiving and year-round — stay tuned for more as we approach the big day!

For my money, this is the quintessential side. Flavor-wise, it’s totally in keeping with Thanksgiving tastes. The horseradish helps cut all that sweet, fatty Tday food, and the mustard reinforces for a one-two punch of spice. And at a meal where salad is the wallflower, green beans are more formidable company for that big turkey and the boat full of gravy occupying everyone’s attention.

If that’s not enough to lure you, other benefits include its ease and speed of preparation (it takes 10 minutes flat) and its willingness to hang out for a few days before serving. Really, what more can you ask for?

I make these green beans year round, but they’re especially great on Tday. Go forth and eat.

Green Beans with Horseradish-Mustard Vinaigrette
serves 4 as a side

1 pound green beans
1 tablespoon spicy whole-grain mustard
1 tablespoon prepared horseradish (I make mine by blending horseradish root with vinegar)
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1/3 cup olive oil
salt and pepper
1/2 cup sliced almonds

Preheat oven to 350º. Spread almonds in a single layer and toast until golden, about 10 minutes. Watch them carefully so they don’t burn.

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Fill a large bowl with ice cubes and water. Working in batches, cook beans in boiling water just until cooked but still crisp, about 2 minutes per batch. Transfer cooked beans to bowl of ice water to “shock” them and stop them from cooking further. Continue cooking and shocking process with remaining batches of beans. Transfer beans to separate bowl and chill. You’ll be serving the beans at room temperature, so chill only enough that they’re no longer hot.

Meanwhile, prepare vinaigrette. Mix horseradish, mustard, red wine vinegar, and lemon juice. Add oil in steady stream while whisking, until all oil has been added and vinaigrette is emulsified.

Transfer green beans to a serving platter. Drizzle vinaigrette over beans, top with toasted almonds, and serve at room temperature.

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Rigatoni with Radish Pesto and Oven-Roasted Tomatoes

rivka — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 13:47:25 +0000

A couple weeks ago, my friend Jeremy told you using the last of the summer bumper crop to make oven-roasted tomatoes. Like the diligent readers you are, several of you went and made your own oven-roasted tomatoes. But then you emailed me later that week asking what to do with the oven-roasted tomatoes you had made. Recognizing that my first-impulse answer, “what can’t you do with them?!” wasn’t exactly so helpful, I started a list of ways to use these plump little suckers. Toss a couple on pizza; pile them in a heap on baked feta and serve with pita chips; add to roasted broccoli and drizzle vinaigrette over the whole mess; and so forth.

One suggestion I neglected to share, of course, was to toss them with pasta. Ironically, that’s my most frequent use for them. I toss them with spaghetti and finish with parmesan, I add them to baked dishes like ziti and lasagna, and — as you’ll see — I mix them with some rigatoni and coat it all with pesto. In this combination, the tomatoes brighten the pesto-coated pasta, punctuating with sweetness and acid. Once you’ve got the tomatoes, the dish takes about 25 minutes to make, though the results would suggest otherwise. An added plus: this doubles as weekday lunch. What more could you ask for?

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Pasta with Fresh Tomato Sauce

rivka — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 17:45:12 +0000

Where we live, time is running out to make this sauce. Tomatoes are on their last legs here in the Northeast, and I’ve been alternating between panic and panicking on and off for the past three weeks about their impending disappearance.

By now, you’ve seen posts on cream of roasted tomato soup and sundried tomatoes. Everyone’s trying to squeeze the last little bit out of summer’s tomato bounty, and really, who can blame them? I’ll be doing the same — there are many jars of oven-roasted tomatoes in my future — but for now, I’m chopping the last of those tomatoes raw into my bowls of pasta and enjoying them in their juicy, fresh state while I still can.

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Pickled [Anything!]

rivka — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 14:44:25 +0000

Yes, yes, yes. I love pickles. Pickle anything, and I’ll eat it. Cucumbers. Tomatoes. Green beans. Grapes. Cherries. Watermelon rind. Cauliflower. Beets. Eggplant. Are you bored yet? I could keep going.

If you ask my fiancee how she feels about pickles, she’ll tell you she’s crazy for the sweet bread-and-butter variety, that she slaps ‘em on every burger or dog she eats. She’ll also tell you that I’ve gone mad, and that our house is turning into one big canning jar. Really. And you know what? She’s kind of right. I have gone a bit nuts. We’ve got five quarts of pickles so far, and I’m not done yet. How could I be, when only cucs have been bottled? I’ve got three green tomatoes waiting to meet a similar fate, and two heads of cauliflower, some beets, and a bag of baby eggplants aren’t far behind. Think this process too complicated or confusing? I’m here to set you straight.

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Peach Tomato Gazpacho

rivka — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 13:36:05 +0000

Ok y’all, I’m a bit late posting this, and you’ll have to forgive me. But then – and I mean immediately; do not pass go, do not wait for September to drift into fall – you must get off the couch and make this soup.

Just last week, the dog days of summer seemed a permanent fixture. Now, as I’m walking to the farmers’ market, I find myself rubbing my hands together, picking up that pace a bit, and reaching for….a cardigan. Fall’s crept up on me again. Every year, I bemoan the end of tomatoes and nectarines, my shortsighted lack of urgency in eating as many of those beautiful beefsteaks and heirlooms as possible. Now I’m making a mad dash for those tomatoes, eating a peach after lunch every day and one in the evening as well, trying to cram as much of the rapidly depleting summer produce down my craw as time will allow.

My fridge is only so large; not, apparently, large enough; those 5 pounds of peaches that I bought last week have softened, ripened, and softened some more. Last night, I came home to some peaches practically begging to be eaten. Ditto the beautiful red tomatoes, which, seemingly suddenly, after a short stay on my counter (never store tomatoes in the fridge; it ruins them), were near-overripe.

I didn’t have quite enough tomatoes to make a sauce-making project worthwhile. As for the peaches, in the past week, I’d made two cakes and a crostada with them and some nectarines. I needed a change of pace.

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Kimchi

rivka — Sun, 12 Sep 2010 21:41:20 +0000

Sometimes, a post writes itself. As I was piling the big heap of pickled cabbage into my largest mason jar, I thought of all the times I’d pigged out on Kimchi in the past, all those times I’d been absolutely sure there was no way to make this stuff at home. I remembered the moment I’d received David Chang’s Momofuku cookbook, how excited I was to discover that there was a recipe for kimchi — a very easy, very doable recipe, involving no more than ten minutes of active prep time. I recalled how few recipes on this site are inspired by East Asia, how frustrated that’s made me over the years, considering how prominently East Asian flavors figure into my home cooking and, to an even greater extent, my eating out. And I knew that as soon as work calmed down and Rosh Hashana had passed, I’d be telling you about this one-bowl dish that’s quickly become a staple in my kitchen.

Like lacto-fermented pickles, the things that make kimchi so delicious are (mostly) environmental. Exposure to air and time turn the mixture of cabbage, chili, fish sauce, salt, and sugar into something much more intriguing than the individual components might suggest. Some of the kimchi I’ve had at restaurants has been overly pungent or funky, too sharply salty or sour, without proper balance. My favorite kimchi in the DC metro area, from the Annandale restaurant Ye Chon, is very good, but it sometimes lacks that hint of sweetness that balances the sour, salty, and spicy flavors and keeps your chopsticks coming back for more. Chang’s kimchi gets that balance just right.

The most time-intensive part of this recipe is the shopping. If you don’t already have fish sauce, you’ll need to buy some. Don’t be seduced by the tiny bottles they sell at Whole Foods; to make this properly, you’ll need the stuff that comes in the big bottle (a bottle usually has between 3-6 cups worth). Yes, it’s another thing to store in the fridge, and I get that that’s a turn-off. And yes, I’m aware that fish sauce can smell like dirty socks. Have you already clicked away? No? I promise that kimchi reins in the funk of the fish sauce, and that the result will smell nothing like the locker room. My favorite fish sauce brands are Squid and Three Crabs, but anything you find at Hmart or an Asian grocer will be totally fine.

Another key ingredient is Korean chili powder, also called Kochukaru. I went to Hmart (the Asian grocery) in search of something by that name, and saw only pounds and pounds of “chili powder.” Turns out, all the chili powder in the Korean aisle at Hmart is kochukaru. If you ask, the ladies behind the register will tell you it’s what they use to make kimchi. You want the coarsely ground stuff. The last special ingredient is jarred salted shrimp, which I didn’t use (I keep a kosher home, which means no shellfish). My kimchi was still delicious.

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Simple Sauteed Snow Peas

rivka — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 15:00:45 +0000

Readers, meet my new favorite side dish.

We spent the morning of our first full day in Santa Fe downtown, at a farmers’ market adjacent to an artists’ market (a lethal concoction as far as my wallet was concerned). At the tail end of our stroll through the farm stands, I caught a glimpse of an overall-clad gentelman manning a fry pan set over a camping stove. I headed over to see what he was cooking, and before I could see any of the wiry, bright green snowpeas bouncing around the frying pan, I hear the crackle-snap of their dip in the hot oil and knew the end result would be mighty tasty. I stuck around. Sure enough, after a few flips of the pan, the blistered snowpeas landed on top, giving their still-green comrades a turn over the heat. Once all the peas were glistening with oil and many were blackened in spots, the gentleman tossed a generous pinch of flaky salt over the vegetables, poured them onto a plate, and shouted for customers and neighboring farmers to get one while they’re hot. I wasted no time popping one of the smoking-hot snowpeas into my mouth.

Their crunch was what caught me first: blackened where their bumpy surfaces had touched the scalding pan, much of the flesh managed to remain crisp, striking just the right balance of doneness. The snowpeas were vivid green, their juices gathering at the bottom of the plate and mixing with that lovely salt. I could’ve eaten the whole lot myself. Naturally, I bought a couple pounds of his bounty, determined to wow D’s family with this surprising treat.

This isn’t one of those stories that ends in failure. I’ll spoil the punch-line right now: for an addictive appetizer or side, it just doesn’t get more foolproof than this. You need only the most modest mis en place: a hot pan, a glug of oil, a couple pinches of salt, and the freshest, crispest snowpeas you can find. The dish practically makes itself. If you want to put them over the edge, squeeze some lemon over the peas just before serving.

If you’re making these for a crowd and don’t have a very large (15-inch) pan, make them in batches. You want these guys to really blister, and they won’t if the pan is crowded. Let the snap-crackle of the peas be your guide: when the vegetables first hit the pan, they’ll really sizzle (watch those forearms — the oil will spatter). After a while, the sound will let up. If the next time you flip the peas, none have browned on the bottom, add a splash more oil: let the sizzling resume. I’ve made these twice, and each time, the peas have needed about four pan-flips, maybe a total of 7-8 minutes in the pan. Don’t stress if yours seem done after 5 minutes or need a bit extra time — they’ll be done when they’re done.

Last night, I served a dish of these snow peas as a side dish to complement seared tuna. But the first time I made them, I served them up right out of the frying pan, smoking hot, to a crowd of hungry bellies waiting on barbequed chicken. These were the perfect low-key appetizer, just the sort of thing you want to absentmindedly munch on while waiting for dinner to hit the table.

Simple Sauteed Snow Peas
serves 6

2 lbs. snow peas, as fresh and crunchy as you can find ‘em, rinsed and thoroughly dried
olive oil
2 pinches salt
wedge of lemon

Heat 2-3 tablespoons olive oil on medium-high in a large stainless steel pan, not a nonstick one. When the oil shimmers on the surface, add 1/3 of the snow peas (careful! oil will splatter). Leave the pan alone for a minute or two, and the peas on the bottom will begin to blister. After about 2 minutes, give the pan a big toss. Blistered peas should rise to the top, and less cooked ones should descend to the bottom of the pan, close to the heat. Again, let the pan be for about 2 minutes. Toss again, to redistribute peas. If peas haven’t blistered, add a tablespoon more olive oil to the pan.

After about 7-8 minutes, peas should be cooked through but still crispy, and some should have darkened or blistered spots. At this point, sprinkle a pinch of salt over the peas, and transfer to a serving bowl or platter. Repeat this process twice more, cooking 1/3 of total peas each time. After all peas have been cooked and transfered to serving dish, squeeze wedge of lemon over peas, use large wide spoon to distribute lemon juice, and serve immediately. (Peas will also be delicious at room temperature, so if you’re not serving as an appetizer to some hungry folks, don’t sweat it; set them aside, and serve when everything else is ready.)

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Taco Night Coleslaw

rivka — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 14:00:16 +0000

Taco night is a perennial favorite. It’s an easy meal to prepare, most components can be prepared well in advance, and if you make it for a dinner party, you’ll be feasting on leftovers for days. When I say “taco night,” of course, I’m referring to that generic category of weeknight suppers, including but not limited to tacos, fajitas, burritos, and anything else involving tortillas, fillings, and toppings of your choice.

In case you’re at a loss for where to start, here’s my go-to iteration of Tex-Mex dinner: I serve warm flour tortillas, refried beans, sauteed peppers and onions, cabbage slaw with lime and chile, and salsa, guacamole, and queso fresco to top it all off. It’s a regular feast.

And please, don’t let me cramp your style: the possibilities aren’t limited to beans and whatnot. If you’re not a fan of the legumes, pan-fry some chicken, fish, or beef slices over high heat until charred, squeeze a lime juice and sprinkle some salt and pepper, and you’ve got yourself a taco or fajita filling.

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Cheese Puffs

rivka — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 18:00:12 +0000

One of the first cookbooks I owned was Nigella Lawson’s Nigella Bites. I bought it at Anthropologie, back when Nigella was a Travel Channel sensation. The Food Network had already gone the way of the dodo, its cleavage-showing hostesses flashing smiles as they tasted “delicious” homemade tarts filled with the scooped-out innards of a store-bought pumpkin pie. No thanks. Nigella’s show was where the fun was at. You could catch the gorgeous broad sneaking downstairs at 1 am in adorable pink PJs, in search of a late-night snack. The camera would zoom really close as she opened the fridge, stuck a finger into a big bowl of chocolate mousse, and licked her finger clean. A dip into the chocolate mousse, pudding, anything, at 1 am is a classic Friedman move. When I saw Nigella do it, I was hooked. She seemed real.

Her cookbook conveyed that same honesty. There were pictures of her with curlers in, wearing a bathrobe. There were sweet ramblings about her favorite suppers, and a mouthwatering picture of homemade pasta and meatballs. And it didn’t stop there. Nigella devoted a chapter of the book to what she called “Legacy.” The section contained humble recipes that were the hallmark of her childhood, things like “Granny Lawson’s Lunch Dish” (a slab-pie of sorts, filled with hard boiled eggs, ground beef, and olives) and “Soft Boiled Eggs with Asparagus Soldiers.” I loved this section because even though I’m pretty sure I never made any of the recipes contained within, it provided the most sincere picture of where Nigella came from.

If I had a cookbook (to dream!), and it had a legacy section, this recipe for cheese puffs would certainly make the cut. It’s a humble recipe; if you saw cheese puffs at a party, you’d probably pass over them in favor of the the rhubarb curd. But to do so would be quite a mistake. A cross between pancakes and biscuits, cheese puffs are crispy and golden around the edges, soft and chewy within. They’re a bit sweet, but unexpectedly, refreshingly, tangy. My father likes them with just sour cream, but I prefer a bit of mascarpone cheese or greek yogurt, and fresh strawberries. But however you eat them — with sour cream, with greek yogurt, with berries, with nothing at all — once you start, you kinda can’t stop.

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Sour Cherry Liqueur

rivka — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 15:32:57 +0000

It’s officially sour cherry season! I got my first quart at the market today, and I simply can’t wait to turn them into this lovely aperitif. Originally posted last July, sour cherry liqueur is back!

Want to do something awesomely cool and really flippin’ easy along with me? Make sour cherry liqueur. It’s the height of sour cherry season, and markets are bursting with those tart little bubbles of juice. The season’s pretty short: I was thinking of hitting up a u-pick next week to get some sour cherries out in the countryside for cheap, but they said they’ll be gone by Sunday. So grab some now, like, now now, and put them to use in a way that’ll keep well into the fall.

My dear friend Dellie had D and me over for an early Thanksgiving dinner last November, and her mother served this liqueur as an aperitif. I was totally blown away: it was sweet, very sweet, but also tart and zingy. It tasted strongly and distinctly of sour cherries, and sipping it sent waves of summer nostalgia down my spine. I sauntered into the kitchen where I found the always-graceful Mrs. S pulling a whole turkey out of the oven to rest. What better time to bother someone for a recipe? She said to come knocking again when it was sour cherry season, and she’d give me the rundown. Unlike most other things, I didn’t forget this promise, and last week, I emailed Mrs. S begging her recipe. She graciously obliged, and her instructions were so thorough that I can easily share them with you. Granted, you won’t be tasting the fruits of your labor until the fall — but if you feel like preserving some of summer’s bounty in this unusual way, I can promise that your patience will be well-rewarded.

That's a knife jutting out of the pitcher -- I used it to stir the stuff, and I did fill it to the top after taking the pic.

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Cucumber-Avocado Soup

rivka — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 13:02:16 +0000

No food-friendly home is without its strange culinary rituals, and mine is no exception. Just ask a recent house guest, who during her 3-day stay caught me in the kitchen before 7 am in wet hair and a bathrobe on two separate occasions, cooking not eggs and toast as the normal people do, but strawberry-chili jam and walnut chocolate chip cookies. I like making elaborate things early in the morning; I’m a total weirdo.

Take another odd ritual in chez NDP: when summer rolls around, I start awkwardly hoarding empty yogurt tubs, filling them as quickly as possible with all sorts of cold summer soups: white gazpacho and chilled corn soup and more. Why I can’t use tupperware like the rest of earthlings, I don’t know. All I know is that cold soup ladled from recycled yogurt tubs on a hot and humid summer day makes me grin big.

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Peas with Leeks and Tarragon

rivka — Wed, 12 May 2010 14:35:11 +0000

This isn’t the recipe I planned to share with you today. There’s a recipe for a cookie that I absolutely adore, that I was sure I posted last July. Thing is, I’ve been searching and searching for it on this site, but it seems either to have gone missing or to have never been posted. I’m still totally confused about where it’s gone, but I’m getting to the bottom of this and will post the recipe later this week…so stay tuned.

In the meantime, peas, anyone?

Fresh peas a staple of springtime, on the menus of every restaurant in the city, and when they’re really fresh, they’re amazing. But I mean really fresh. Like, 1 day old or less. Sometimes, you get a lucky batch of pods, and the peas inside are small and young enough that they never take on that starchy texture or lose their sweet, clean flavor. But generally, fresh peas are hit-or-miss if you buy ‘em more than a couple days out. That’s why this recipe calls for frozen peas (*collective sigh of relief*).

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Bursting Hot Tomatoes with Cheesy Breadcrumbs

rivka — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 14:05:15 +0000

There’s a little game I play as fall wanes into winter. It’s about tomatoes. In summer, when tomatoes are at their peak, I want nothing but to eat them — lots of them, all the time — in preparations as simple as can be. Don’t make me pasta with tomato sauce when bursting, juicy, raw tomatoes can be had in abundance; slice up a couple, drizzle a little olive oil on top, share a pinch of salt, and I’ll be on my way, thank you.

The fall tomatoes in these parts aren’t half-bad, either. Some farmers — Toigo, notably — do a great job with the late-season fruit. But December and January (and beyond) are murky tomato territory, where the red ones are all found beneath the fluorescent lighting of your nearest grocery store, and the farmers market tomatoes tend to be green, for frying or pickling only.

Now before you let anyone tell you that supermarket tomatoes are good for nothing, I’ve got to chime in. I’ll agree wholeheartedly that January beefsteak tomatoes are about as mealy and flavorless as they come. However, the grocery store’s cherry tomatoes are passable when you really, really need them. Furthermore, there are ways to enhance supermarket tomatoes to the point that they’re not just edible, they’re actually kinda tasty. This is one of those ways.

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Down and Dirty Pasta e Cecci

rivka — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 14:00:01 +0000

Anything that has the words “down and dirty” in the title is something I will, sooner or later, make. “Down and dirty” suggests a rough-and-tumble version of the refined original, something you’re more likely to eat on your front stoop than in a dining room. When I hear down and dirty, I see myself in cutoff jean shorts and one of those ribbed white tank tops, sitting outside on a balmy summer day. There are mosquitos in the air, bangs in my face. I’m eating from a clay bowl I threw in the pottery studio down the street. When lunchtime rolls around, I notice some chickpeas in the cabinet, so I decide to throw them in with some chili, anchovies, and pasta, and call it lunch. Down and dirty lunch, that is.

Surely you can understand how, when I saw a recipe for “down and dirty pasta e cecci” on Food52′s website (via Jennifer Steinhauser of NYT, via her friend fisheri — that’s his username, not his real name — oh, the confusion!), I simply had to make it. Mind you, I didn’t even know what “cecci” were. I don’t speak Italian. But down and dirty pasta is something that best be coming out of my kitchen, like, pronto.

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Moroccan Salmon with Curried Yogurt

rivka — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 14:00:33 +0000

Though it doesn’t appear very often on this site, fish — salmon in particular — is a staple in the NDP kitchen. I like it because it’s a substantial cornerstone of a meal without being as heavy as meat often is. I frequently host lunch on Saturdays, and I almost always cook for these lunches in advance; salmon can be served cold with a dipping sauce, obviating the need to carefully par-bake it before reheating the next day to serve. Also, it’s delicious.

Last year, I frequently cooked fish “en papillote,” each filet wrapped with care in its own little parcel of parchment paper. It’s a very healthful way of cooking fish, in its own juices and little else. Sometimes I’d add slivers of thai bird chillies or slices of peach, but the method was always the same. This year, I’m planning to broil my fish more often. That little spot at the bottom of my oven doesn’t get enough airtime, and considering its ability to make sugar into caramel and turn anything that beautiful shade of brown, it really should.

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Syllabub

rivka — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 22:11:46 +0000

To Amanda Hesser’s list of foods whose names alone command that you make them, I add this quirky dessert. Syllabub! Every time in the past two weeks I’ve called it by name, it’s been met with total crack-up laughter. Don’t you want to make it too, just to be able to say you whipped something up and it’s called Syllabub? Ha.

Now that I’ve made it, I can tell you the name shouldn’t be your only motivation for giving Syllabub a whirl. I came across the recipe in an old issue of Saveur (1996, maybe?) that I was reading last weekend at a friend’s lake house in Wisconsin. The picture caught my eye: a big, heavy-bottomed glass was filled to the brim with what looked like vanilla custard, topped with a bit of lemon zest and a sprig of rosemary. Intrigued, I read the piece: turns out, syllabub is basically whipping cream combined with sherry and some flavorings. Something about the alcohol or the acid of the lemon juice (or maybe both) thicken the cream without much whipping — it’s very bizarre! — so very little, if any, work is necessary.

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Crispy Kale Chips

rivka — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 02:35:43 +0000

Hello there readers, and hello 2010! I’m back from Israel and hope you enjoyed the dispatches from abroad. In truth, there’s so much more to tell: a dear friend took D and me on a fabulous tour of the Old City’s Christian Quarter, where we ate amazingly fresh hummus, climbed down to secret underground cisterns, and visited a tucked-away Austrian hospice for excellent cappucinos and Jerusalem’s best apple streudel. And that was just one morning!

But now we’re back to the grind, and besides, you must be tired of my rants about my travels. You come here for recipes, and I aim to please. So let’s talk about kale chips, shall we?

I think I first read about crispy kale in the late Gourmet Mag. The recipe was as simple as they come — kale, olive oil, salt, pepper — and accompanying it were stunning photos of long, evergreen-colored leaves shooting out of a tall glass. Gourmet said the kale was the perfect cocktail party food, and looking at the pictures, I had to agree. I could envision these beautiful vases of kale chips placed on a long table, giving height to the usual array of flat cookie platters and cheese plates. Yum.

One evening, I had a bunch of kale to use up and decided to give the recipe a go. If it was a success, I figured, I’d make it at my next dinner party; the beautiful chips were certain to impress.

But then I ate one.

Can we discuss the fact that my entire mouth, like every single tooth, had green flecks all about? And flecks is an understatement. I might as well have colored my smile with green marker, it was that bad. Cocktail party food my #$@*^%!!! Kale chips are absolutely delicious — they’re crispy, and salty, and perfectly peppery, utterly addictive in short — but they’re something to be eaten at home alone, or with someone who really, really likes you. Either way, be prepared to laugh.

Don’t let me green teeth scare you away completely, though: these kale chips truly are delicious. If any of you have made New Year’s resolutions to eat more vegetables, consider this recipe a belated holiday gift. You can easily polish off an entire batch of kale this way.

Kale Chips
adapted from Gourmet

These chips are delicious just so, but they really pop with a last-minute squeeze of lemon, if you have it handy.

1 bunch kale, cleaned and dried, center stems removed
olive oil
salt
pepper
wedge of lemon, optional

Put the kale in a large plastic bag, drizzle about 1/8 cup olive oil inside, and shake and massage to combine. Add more oil to the bag as needed until all leaves are coated in the oil. Spread kale leaves in a single layer on as many baking sheets as you need, and sprinkle generously with salt and pepper. Bake at 300 for 20-25 minutes, until kale is crispy all over. Cooking time depends on age and dryness of kale, so watch carefully and remove when every piece is crispy. Serve immediately, and squeeze lemon overtop just before serving, if desired.

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Brussels Sprouts with Sriracha, Honey, and Lime

rivka — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 20:59:27 +0000

When the New Yorker lands in my mailbox each Tuesday, the first thing I read is the weekly restaurant write-up, Tables for Two. It’s short and sweet, and usually contains a brief description of one or two stand-out dishes. Every once in a while, I hear one of the descriptions and think, that sounds like something I should try to make. Even more rarely than that, I actually get off my derriere and try to make one of the recipes. This is one of those times.

The idea came from The Vanderbilt, a restaurant in Prospect Heights. According to the New Yorker, “the best dish might be the roasted Brussels sprouts, dressed with sriracha, lime, and honey, each bite a perfect combination of sweet, spicy, and tart.” They really did sound perfect, and given a) how simple the ingredient list sounded and b) the fact that I happened to have all four aformentioned ingredients in my house, I decided to give it a go. What better use of a snow day than turning dish descriptions into great food?

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Brussels Sprouts with “Bacon” and Pears

rivka — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 01:15:24 +0000

Yet another installment of my Weekday Lunch series, where I share recipes suited for home or the office.

Last Wednesday night, a colleague of mine had a pre-Thanksgiving Thanksgiving party. The idea is brilliant. Since most of us spend Tday with anyone from parents and siblings to in-laws and cousins twice removed, might as well take the night before to be with friends and surrogate family members, and to toast the holiday in style. And that’s just what we did. We ate butter chicken (spicy!) and Brussels sprouts with apples and the most trashy-chic tater tot casserole; we pigged out on pecan bars (from yours truly) and bread pudding and phenomenal ricotta cheesecake; and we washed it all down with lots and lots of bourbon. There truly is no better way to usher in Thanksgiving.

The next day, having landed in Detroit to spend the weekend with D’s family, those Brussels sprouts were still on my mind. They were perfectly caramelized, much softer in the middle than I usually make them, and speckled with little chunks of roasted apple, which provided the perfect sweet, tangy contrast to the smoky and just-barely-bitter sprouts.

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Cauliflower with Brown Butter

rivka — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 14:15:53 +0000

Part of the fun of food blogging is that my kitchen rarely sees the exact same dish twice. Driven by the need for new content, I’m always in search of the next great recipe. I abide some serious duds along the way, but they’re a necessary evil in this business, and well worth the pain when you consider that experimentation is the only way to unearth the new best recipe.

Folks, this is the new best recipe.

The minute I started to make it, I knew it’d be something special, and frankly, I’m a little shocked that in 26 years of eating mostly vegetarian food, 8 years of cooking for myself, 5 years of being really interested in food, and over 2 years of food blogging, I never came across this sublime combination. The minute the cauliflower hit the heat, I knew I’d struck the jackpot. Consider the nutty, sweet sides of cauliflower; you can imagine how brown butter might amplify that nuttiness. It plays the perfect foil to the sweetness as well, letting it come out without overwhelming you. A hit of lemon zest at the end of cooking brightens the flavors and cuts the richness, and a quick confetti of grated Parmigiano Reggiano adds that perfect amount of salt. Seriously, this is the best tasting thing I’ve had in so, so long. I made it twice in the two weeks before Thanksgiving, and I just bought more cauliflower to make it again. It’s perfect. If you don’t trust me, you can check out this NYT recipe and be just as weirded out as I am that Julia Moskin and I had the lightbulb moment at the same time. How bizarre.

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Broccoli with Capers and Olives, Two Ways

rivka — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 13:43:44 +0000

Finally, the next chapter of “Weekday Lunch,” where I offer recipes for food that fits in tupperware and warms in the office microwave.

This dish happened completely by accident. D had decided to order a pizza for dinner, and I decided to do something else, seeing as it would have been my fourth pizza meal of the week. (Ugh.) I did a quick scan of the fridge and saw a bag of nice-looking young broccoli that I’d picked up at the weekend farmers’ market. I also had the last of a tub of greek olives that I’d recently replaced with a new tub and wanted to use up, and the end of a jar of summer’s tomato sauce. There was about 1/4 of a box of macaroni left in the cupboard, so I figured I’d throw the last little bits of each of these to make a nice pasta dinner.

I started by finely chopping a shallot and heating a tab of butter in a large, shallow pan over medium-low heat. When the shallot was translucent and fragrant but not brown, I added about 1/2 teaspoon of red chili flakes and 2 cups of broccoli. I knew I planned to cook the broccoli just until al dente, but I wanted to use the stems as well as the florets, so I sliced the stems pretty finely — about 1/3-1/2-inch thick — so that they’d cook pretty quickly. I added a hefty pinch of salt and tossed the pan a couple times to combine.

Soon after adding the broccoli, I tossed in what was left of the olives, probably about 1/2 cup worth. I also added about a tablespoon of capers. At this point, the broccoli was heating up and had turned a vibrant shade of green. I wanted to preserve this color, so I added a very little bit of water from the pasta, which had already started to cook. Non-pasta water would have been fine as well, but it helps to have the water be hot, so that it doesn’t slow down the cooking.

After about five minutes, the broccoli was almost perfect; still that beautiful green shade, mostly cooked but still with a bite. I ended up adding several ladlefuls of my tomato sauce, and eventually some hot pasta, to make this dinner. But before tomatoes ever hit the pan, I looked down at the broccoli with its briny accompaniments and thought, gosh, this’d make a fantastic side. So there you have it; broccoli with capers and olives. I’d probably squeeze a bit of lemon if I were serving this alone; hitting it with some acidity would compliment the vegetal and salty flavors. I could see it served atop israeli couscous, or as an accompaniment to chicken. It was also pretty great mixed with tomato sauce and tossed with the end of the box of macaroni. Just sayin’.

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Soup of Fresh Shelling Beans and Sorrel

rivka — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 18:04:40 +0000

Is it Monday? I’m pretty sure it’s Monday. The last two weeks have been a blur of sniffles, tissues, and gallons (I mean it) of chai. I came down with a cold just around the start of the month. Chalk it up to a late recovery from August’s crunch time at work. I took a couple of days on the couch to recover, and when it started to fade, I headed back to the office. But the cold wasn’t finished yet, and by trying to rush it, I only invited it to extend its stay. Sure enough, it hung around, bringing a sinus infection to the party, and before I knew it, two weeks passed. Well now I’m better, but in anticipation of the many unwelcome colds sure to pay visits this summer, I’ll share a godsend of a recipe with you. It’s for a soup so simple, yet so restorative, that I probably wouldn’t have made it through the past half-month without it.

One morning when I was feeling unusually chipper, I shelled some fresh cranberry beans and threw them in a pot. I added a couple teaspoons of olive oil, half an onion chopped, 2 whole cloves of garlic, water, and, about 20 minutes in, a big bunch of sorrel leaves (NOT the stems, which, I learned the hard way, separate into sharp spindles that are incredibly NOT fun to eat, especially when glands are swollen. Ouch.) I let the whole thing boil away for 25 minutes total; by then, the beans were pretty soft but not mushy, the sorrel was fully cooked, and the broth was incredibly fragrant and a bit tart from the sorrel.

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Crostini of All Sorts

rivka — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 17:23:31 +0000

During a recent stop at the bookstore on my street, Idle Time Books (which, btw, had a cameo in A Few Good Men), I was thumbing through cookbook author Deborah Madison’s latest book, What We Eat When We Eat Alone, which she co-wrote with her artist-partner Patrick McFarlin. WWEWWEA (liberally abbreviating the long title here…) is a funny and shockingly intimate account of the ways in which, in the absence of others, food becomes our animated companion. It’s a book that draws you in, and before I knew it, I had plopped down on the floor to dig in, and was reading about pouring sardine juice onto cottage cheese and eating it on one foot at the open refrigerator. I laughed out loud as I thought about similar moments I’ve had, grabbing a bite standing up while I peer into the fridge for my next little nibble.

In the spirit of celebrating this wonderful little book, I’ll tell you about one thing I invariably eat lots of when it’s just me in the house: crostini.

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Carrot-Zucchini Bread

rivka — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 00:30:26 +0000

This is the kind of recipe I live for. It reminds me of those really good bran muffins you find at local coffee shops, with the nutty, wholesome flavors and tops that crust around the edges and never are perfectly round. It’s got a more well-defined crumb than carrot kugel, but it’s not as sweet as carrot cake, and grated zucchini lends it sophistication. Not that this is a snobby loaf — just the opposite. It takes about 5 minutes to mix together, and the 80-minute baking time lets you actually get something else done while you wait. I brought it to our pre-Yom Kippur meal on Sunday afternoon, but it’d make a phenomenal breakfast or afternoon snack.

special thanks to reader Catherine for pointing out that I failed to mention the eggs in the ingredient list. Sorry everyone! Three eggs.

Carrot Bread
adapted loosely from Bon Appetit

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup white whole wheat flour
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. baking powder
1/2 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup cane sugar
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/4 cup applesauce
3 eggs
2 cups grated carrot
1 cup grated zucchini

Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter and flour 9x5x3-inch loaf pan. Sift first 6 ingredients into medium bowl. Beat sugar, oil, eggs, applesauce, and vanilla to blend in large bowl. Mix in zucchini and carrot. Add dry ingredients and stir well.

Transfer batter to prepared pan. Bake until tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 1 hour 20 minutes. Cool bread in pan on rack 15 minutes. Cut around bread to loosen. Turn out onto rack and cool completely. (Can be prepared 1 day ahead. Wrap in foil and let stand at room temperature.)

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Pickles!

rivka — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 22:30:48 +0000

Folks, I’m finding it hard to contain my excitement about NDP’s second-ever guest post. Guess who wrote it? MY MOM!

That’s right: in the post below, NDP Ima tells you all about easy-to-make, hard-to-stop-eating pickles. You’ll see from her intro paragraph where I got my taste buds. These pickles are salty, tangy, and really bright from the addition of fresh dill. So read up — then go make some pickles!

I am really not a salt lover. I don’t use much when I cook, and in restaurants great food that’s well-seasoned is often too salty for my taste. I don’t care for chips or french fries, and I prefer nuts spicy or au naturel. Nonetheless, I do love briny salty things – olives, capers, and sour pickles. So when I was leaving town for a long weekend and had a lot of small cucumbers that wouldn’t last until my return, I decided to try my hand at some pickles. I wanted spicy, garlicky, dill pickles that would make themselves in the refrigerator while I was gone. I remembered the ones a family friend used to make with cucumbers from his garden and my dad’s. He didn’t use shortcuts, though – he put his pickles in huge crocks of brine and alum in the basement for weeks.

I cut the cukes into thick, chunky slices and placed them in a quart jar with pickling spices and garlic. I didn’t have any fresh dill, so my first batch just had dill seed from the pickling spice, but it still tasted authentic. I prepared the vinegar brine and filled the jar, leaving it upside down on the counter overnight. The next morning, before rushing to the airport, I put the jar in the frig. When I returned four nights later, the pickles were done to perfection!
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Salmon with Herb Butter and Various Roasted Vegetables

rivka — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 20:01:05 +0000

D and I had people over Friday night. As of Thursday, I not only had done no cooking, I hadn’t even figured out my menu. Now, I’m not one to plan these things all too far in advance — but 24 hours is not much time to plan, shop, and make food for a dinner party. Not impossible, but not ideal.

When I’m cutting it close to the wire, I tend to keep it as simple as possible. I picked up a bunch of salmon fillets and all the good-looking vegetables that TJs had to offer. Without much time to contemplate interesting recipes and a lingering fear of making the whole house smell like fish, I wrapped each piece of salmon individually in parchment paper and tucked a bit of herb butter inside. The herb butter infuses the salmon while it steams, and the end result is both healthy, flavorful, and much less potent. No fish smell whatsoever in the house as of Saturday morning.

I made a vinaigrette with the herb butter, some capers, and lots of lemon and lime, and served it alongside the fish. In retrospect, I should have just made the vinaigrette first and skipped the herb butter step entirely; that’s the recipe I provide below. It’s a simple presentation that almost always pleases.

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Granola with Tahini

rivka — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 16:25:52 +0000

Ahh lovely readers, I’ve missed you! I’ve been posting sporadically at best for the past month, because work has been absolutely insane and I haven’t had time to even enter the kitchen, let alone write about it. That last post on zucchini soup was my lame attempt to give you reading material while I was at work, so as not to abandon you completely — but I unwittingly passed along a post from last year, just before my Alaska cruise, and let you all think I was headed on a fabulous vacation. Not so! I spent Labor Day…..well, laboring. At the office. Until very late. But now all that should be behind me because we signed off on our research yesterday, and all that’s left to do is write the accompanying speech. I’m hoping today is the beginning of my re-entry into my favorite room of the apartment. Cross your fingers for me, will you?

Busy times at the office need to end with something restorative. Sometimes it’s a big bowl of pho, with its etherial broth and slurp-tastic noodles. Other times it’s a piece of good toast with some homemade jam. This morning, the first in a month that I haven’t had to start a 15-hour day at 8:30 am, I made my own granola.

I once was in the habit of making granola every week. It’s a good thing to have around for breakfast in the morning, and it pairs great with that super-tart yogurt in the fridge. But lately there’s been no time for such simple pleasures, and breakfast has consisted mostly of whatever I grabbed the night before at Trader Joe’s. Needless to say, I was more than ready to put my own labor hours back into the food I eat.

My usual granola has almond butter, which I find creates clumps better than water or oil and whose flavor doubles down on the granola’s nutty flavor. This morning, though, I was out of almond butter, so I went with tahini (sesame butter), which has a similar texture, instead. To balance the flavor of tahini, which can be overwhelming if not used sparingly, I added a splash of walnut oil, as well as a bit of chopped crystallized ginger, which paired well with the sesame flavor and gave a little punch. A generous pinch of cinnamon and a whisper of cloves brought the granola squarely into fall’s territory, which I suppose is appropriate, given that the weather is dreary and it’s dark when I wake up these days.

I was still concerned that the tahini might overwhelm, but it totally doesn’t: because the granola cooks until golden, the other flavors in there — almonds, oats, ginger, cherries, raisins — get a chance to toast and intensify, bringing the sesame flavor into balance. I LOVE this batch and plan on making another one, some other not-super-early morning.

Hope you all had great weekends, and I look forward to seeing you around here more regularly!

Granola with Tahini

2 1/2 cups oats
1/3 cup maple syrup
1/4 cup tahini
1 Tbsp walnut oil, optional
2/3 cup pepitas (pumpkin seeds), either salted or unsalted, depending on preference
2/3 cup sliced almonds
2/3 cup chopped pecans
2/3 cup raisins, cranberries, or other dried berry (I like half raisins, half cherries)
2 Tbsp chopped crystallized ginger
1/2 tsp salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon cloves

Preheat oven to 325.

In a small bowl, mix syrup, tahini, oil if using, salt, and cinnamon until incorporated. In a large bowl, mix all remaining ingredients until well-distributed. Drizzle the syrup-tahini mixture overtop, stirring with a fork until all dry bits are at least slightly wet and clumps have started to form.

Spread granola on a large rimmed baking sheet in a thin layer and bake at 325 for 10-12 minutes. Remove from oven, stir with a fork to move pieces from edge to center and from top to bottom. Make sure pieces that have started to brown are in the center and well-surrounded. Return to oven and bake 10-12 more minutes, until golden brown throughout. Granola will not be crunchy when it leaves the oven; don’t worry — it’ll crisp up as it cools. Once cool, transfer to air-tight container; granola will keep this way for up to 1 month.

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Smoky Corn Salad

rivka — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 02:42:28 +0000

So sorry that posts have been so few and far between (and so short) lately. I’m doing my best to offer some great summer suggestions between work and work — bear with me; just two more weeks of this insanity, and I’ll be back on track.

Meanwhile, hopefully you’re taking advantage of the last of summer’s produce more than I am. If you find yourself swimming in corn, this smoky number is a great variation on the corn salad theme. It combines raw corn that’s charred in a smoking castiron pan, poblanos that are cooked over an open flame to remove the skins and intensify their flavor, a bit of red onion, and of course, some of those delightfully plump and round cherry tomatoes that are so good this time of year. The method is so simple it’s a joke: just char everything in the castiron pan all together, and add the tomatoes just before serving. It’s just the way to take advantage of summer’s abundance. Have a plate in my honor, and once I crawl out from under this rock, I’ll be back in the kitchen in no time.

Smoky Corn Salad

3 ears of corn, husks and fibers removed
1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved
1/4 of a red onion, diced
2 poblano peppers
1/2 a jalapeno, diced, optional
1/4 tsp. smoked spanish paprika
olive oil
salt
pepper
1 lime

Roast poblanos over an open flame, turning to blister skin on all sides. When fully blistered, turn off heat and transfer peppers to a paper bag or roll inside tinfoil. let steam for 5 minutes, then run under water to remove skins. Chop roughly and set aside.

Heat castiron or heavy stainless steel pan over high heat. Remove corn from cob, and combine with chopped onions and jalapeno, if using. Add 1 tablespoon olive oil to pan and immediately add corn mixture. Toss to coat, then let sit for a 30 seconds at a time just to develop a real char on the kernels. Add smoked paprika, and add salt to taste. Keep tossing and charring, tossing and charring, until there are enough brown spots to give some serious smoky flavor. Remove from heat, add tomatoes, and toss to combine. Transfer to a plate, and squeeze 1 fresh lime overtop. Serve warm or at room temperature.

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Marcella Hazan’s Pesto

rivka — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 22:04:52 +0000

Basil is aplenty at DC’s farmers’ markets. This week, my favorite farmer was selling massive bags of the stuff for just $3.99. I probably came home with a good 2 pounds of basil — hard to imagine considering how light it is. There was only one thing to do: make pesto.

The last time I blogged about pesto, I largely focused on the method. Heidi at 101 Cookbooks had written about making pesto like an Italian grandmother, and I was inspired enough by her post to give the old fashioned knife-on-board method a try. The result was wonderful — chunky and rustic, with plenty of the irregularity that’s the hallmark of handmade things. But given how busy I’ve been at work lately, standing in the kitchen slaving over chopped basil just wasn’t in the cards for today. Instead, I followed the sage advice of another Italian grandmother, Marcella Hazan. I pulled her Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking off the shelf and set about to make pesto using her (apparently sanctioned) food processor method.

Before you roll your eyes and call me a fraud, it’s in her book: Pesto, food processor method. Apparently the Italian goddess is fine with it. Plus, if that’s not enough evidence for you, I once heard Lynn Rosetto Casper, the formidable chef and host of APM’s radio show The Splendid Table, say that if you go to the Liguria region of Italy, to Genoa, where pesto originated, and follow the tips from the locals to the actual neighborhood in Genoa where pesto was actually invented, the Italian grandmothers there use food processors! That was the last time I had a second thought about whizzing the stuff together.

I think Hazan’s recipe is the best one I’ve ever made. The balance between basil, pine nuts, raw, pungent garlic, and Parmigiano Reggiano and Romano cheeses is just teetering in equilibrium. I also used a truly olive-y olive oil that I got on a twitter rec (Aria, available at Whole Foods), which may have made the difference. In any event, it’s a recipe I wouldn’t hesitate to make again. So hurry out to your market while basil’s still available, and try this pesto. It’d even make Marcella proud.

Marcella Hazan’s Pesto
I doubled the recipe and got about a pint, so this makes about 1/2 a pint

2 cups tightly packed basil leaves
3 tablespoons pine nuts
1/2 cup olive oil
2 garlic cloves, chopped fine before being added to the processor
1/2 cup grated Parmigiano Reggiano cheese
2 tablespoons grated Romano cheese
3 tablespoons butter, softened

Blend all ingredients except cheese and butter until relatively smooth. Fold in cheese by hand to give that chunky, rustic texture. Fold in softened butter, incorporating it evenly into the pesto.

If freezing, do not add cheese and butter; add to thawed pesto just before serving. Top with a thin layer of olive oil, which will help keep pesto green.
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Not So Potato-y Salad

rivka — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 08:42:11 +0000

From a vege-mostly-tarian’s perspective, spring and summer are the seasons to beat. Fresh fruit and vegetables are available in abundance, and the variety, especially in summer, is simply unmatched. I make at least one salad a day; using anything from the usual lettuce and Israeli cucumbers to radishes to carrots to tomatoes and nectarines, mushrooms and garlic scapes and beets and even raw kale (my newest addition), I rarely repeat ingredients two days in a row.

It’s in this light that barbeque food confuses the hell out of me; why, when there are so many beautiful fruits and vegetables available, do we resort to coleslaws and potato salads that are literally choking on my gloppy, quivering, nemesis, the devil named Mayo? Those thick, white dressings are a “no, thanks” for me, but if we’re going to use them, why not when we’re on our 20th batch of kale and need to get creative about masking the taste of winter? I simply don’t get the desire to coat delicious summer vegetables in all that goop. …And the Mayo gripes resume.

While I almost always serve a leafy green salad with meals these days, I did buy some really beautiful tiny tomatoes at the Foggy Bottom market last week, which gave me an occasion to reconsider the merits of potato salad. I’m not a huge potato person, but I get the appeal of having a side dish that’s got some starch and substance but isn’t the same old rice or other grain. However, instead of putting the potatoes front and center, I decided to make room for other vegetables to share the limelight. Happily, the market provided many options. I settled on some pattypan, small summer squash that are shaped somewhat like a flying saucer, as well as some nice-looking green beans.

After boiling, shocking, and slicing the potatoes, I sliced and blanched the zucchini. I left the green beans raw, for crunch, and I’m glad I did — they provided a much-needed contrast to the softer vegetables. I coated the salad in a light, tangy, slightly spicy shallot-mustard vinaigrette, which complemented the slight bitterness of the zucchini and gave otherwise boring potatoes some real character. All in all, this is the type of potato salad I’d actually go for: it highlights summer produce instead of masking it, and its tangy flavors will make a great addition to any barbeque.

Not So Potato-y Salad

1 pound small (like, really small) red and yellow potatoes
2 long summer squash (yellow or green), sliced into 1/2-inch slices
1 pound green beans, halved
2 shallots, diced finely
2 teaspoons coarse dijon mustard
1 teaspoon honey
1/4 cup sherry or white wine vinegar
1/8 cup olive oil
1 teaspoon walnut oil, optional
salt and pepper

Boil potatoes in 4 cups water until soft but not mushy, about 10 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, remove potatoes and transfer to serving bowl. Let cool 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, blanch squash slices in potato water about 2 minutes, just until soft. Drain and run under cold water for a couple seconds to stop cooking. Transfer to serving bowl.

Slice potatoes into rounds, and transfer to serving bowl. Add green beans and toss to mix.

In a small bowl or dressing jar, combine all remaining ingredients except oil. Pour oil in a slow stream, whisking to combine. If using jar, shake vigorously to emulsify. Add dressing to salad and toss about 10 minutes before serving. Serve at room temperature.

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Summer Succotash

rivka — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 14:20:55 +0000

Round next of my weekday lunch series, where I post about dishes that’ll put PB&J to shame.

I love the flavor of buttery, salty, corn on the cob. I love it even more now that I’ve discovered the sweetest corn ever, from Toigo Orchards. Toigo sets up shop at the Dupont farmers’ market; their corn has apparently won “best at the market” several years in a row. The last time I bought it, I was told it was picked the day before; it doesn’t get much fresher than that. And having tried other ears, they really don’t compare. Some are too starchy, and others have a thick, almost leathery skin around the kernel, whereas Toigo’s ears are sweet, the thin-skinned kernels practically bursting with juice.

Having bought quite a few ears last week, I was searching for new things to do with them come week’s end. For dinner on Friday night, I served this succotash dish — a very simple play on that classic Southern staple. It’s got the flavor of sweet, salty cob corn but with just a drizzle of olive oil instead of the usual butter. I bulked up the succotash with some chopped green beans, which I left on the raw side, and panfried zucchini, which I essentially seared in a smoking but oil-less castiron pan, then allowed to soften in the serving bowl. The succotash gets a boost from freshly-squeezed lemon juice and a bit of the lemon’s zest, but other than that, olive oil, salt, and pepper are its only seasoning. When the produce is this good, you don’t want to doctor it up much more than that.

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Andalusian Gazpacho

rivka — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 12:34:54 +0000

Please welcome my friend Jeremy, who was bold enough to suggest guest-posting on my blog and kind enough to follow through. He brought over a jar of this gazpacho and when I dunked a spoon in for a taste, I ended up finishing half the jar. It’s the perfect summer soup, and I’m thrilled to be featuring it on NDP.

The height of summer means the height of tomato season, and in our house that means gazpacho season. Now, this means different things to different people. Some are partial to a soup that could easily be mistaken for salsa. Others are all about the cucumbers or the bell peppers. I’ve even heard people refer to a perfectly lovely watermelon soup as gazpacho, though I’d like to think any self-respecting Spaniard would scoff at this. For my money — and we’ll get to how it doesn’t need to be a lot of money in a minute — this easy-to-make gazpacho is the way to go. My spouse and I came upon the basis for this recipe (from Epicurious) some years ago, and over time we’ve adapted it and turned it into a staple of our summertime repertoire.

All in you’re talking about 15 minutes of work for a gazpacho that puts the tomatoes right where they belong: front and center. It’s substantial enough with a hunk of fresh baguette to make for a great mid-week meal just sitting at the coffee table. It’s refined enough, topped with fresh chives, to lead off a small dinner party. And it’s casual enough to serve spoonless in teacups or shot glasses for larger gatherings. It’s just about a perfect summer soup, which is why we perpetually have a big jar of it in the fridge until tomatoes go out of season. And did I mention it’ll keep for close to a week?
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Linguini with Artichokes and Sweet Peas

rivka — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 22:25:50 +0000

Here’s another round of my “weekday lunch” series, where I offer recipes that’ll make your colleagues green with envy.

Peas are one of those foods that have completely changed for me since I started shopping at the farmers’ market. In regular grocery stores (that aren’t Fairway, Whole Foods or Dean and Delucca), it’s pretty rare to find whole peas in the pod. If you want peas, you’re likely headed for the frozen section or even the canned section (though I really think that frozen peas are 100x better than canned). The first time I saw peas at the farmers’ market, I was mystified: peas come in a pod, with a couple of teeny leaves on one end — and unlike canned or frozen peas, they’re completely raw.

I’ve now made this recipe twice, and I can assure you that raw peas really make all the difference. These pictures are from the time I made it with frozen peas, and you can see that the peas are kind of shriveled in places; that’s because frozen peas are already cooked, so even a quick blanch or a toss in the pan makes them soften and shrivel. When using raw peas, you can do a super-quick blanch or saute and still keep the integrity of the peas shape. And that’s not to mention how much sweeter fresh peas are! They actually taste like….peas. It’s wonderful.
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Avocado Tomato Salad

rivka — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 23:12:02 +0000

It’d be a shame to spend too much of this day indoors, because it’s beautiful outside and I have an all-day pool pass — so I’m going to keep this short: It’s summer, people! That means I’m barely to be seen at the grocery store, stocking up on fruit and veggies almost exclusively at the three nearby farmers’ markets to supplement my CSA. I’m high on summer produce.

Avocados and tomatoes are especially excellent right now. Tomatoes haven’t quite hit their peak, but I picked up some beautiful heirlooms this morning and we enjoyed them in salad, with a bit of salt and not much else. Last week, I had some beautiful on-the-vine tomatoes in the house, as well as some perfectly ripe avocados and some baby lettuce from a friend’s garden, so I threw together a really simple salad that’s definitely going to be a staple on my plate this season. It’s just lettuce, avocados, tomatoes, a crumble or two of my usual Keswick Creamery feta, and some lemon, salt, and pepper. It doesn’t get much simpler or better than that.
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Wheatberry Salad with Cranberries, Feta, and Mint

rivka — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 01:32:34 +0000

Yet another installment of my weekday lunch series; you can never have enough recipes for midday workplace eats.

I don’t have anything to share about this recipe that’s particularly exciting. It’s just another rendition of my standard grain+bean+berry+herb salad formula. But I realized as I made this salad that it was my first time making wheatberries. At least, I’m pretty sure it was my first time — in any event, it definitely won’t be my last. Wheatberries are pretty underrated, so much so that when I served them last Friday night, most everyone around the table asked what they were. “Wheat,” I replied. No one got it; “What part of the wheat? Like, they’re really just wheat? Are they some sort of berries that grow off the wheat crop?” No, I replied, it’s really just wheat. Funny that we don’t know what the food we eat most often actually looks like, but that’s a story for another time.

Wheatberries are sweet and nutty, with a nice solid texture. They’re probably super versatile; I can envision them in a variety of salads, soups, and stews. Writing that line, I just remembered that I’ve actually used wheatberries before, when making the Sephardic version of cholent, the rib-sticking stew made on Friday and cooked at a low temperature through the night. Unlike the Eastern European recipe of barley, beans, potatoes, beef, and eggs, the Sephardic version, called “Hamin,” is made with wheatberries, chickpeas, and dates in addition to the beef, chicken, and other leftovers. The wheatberries are cooked inside cheesecloth wrapper within the dish, so they can be piled separately onto the plate as a bed for the rest of the goodies.
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Bulgur with Black Eyed Peas, Spinach and Dates

rivka — Thu, 14 May 2009 19:44:00 +0000

Yet another installment of my weekday lunch series. You can never have enough work-lunch-friendly dishes, now can you?

I work on the ninth floor of my firm’s office building. There are lots of conference rooms on our floor, and when a lunch meeting yields leftovers, they usually make their way into the ninth floor kitchen, which happens to be right across from my cubicle. When we hear the clomp-clomp of high heels in the kitchen and the rustling of plastic trays and wrap paper, we know it’s going to be good. Within seconds, my entire pod will have descended on the kitchen, scavenging for the best wrap, the freshest-looking corner of the spinach salad, the last piece of baklava. After poking around for ourselves, we’ll shoot out an email to our friends down the hall alerting them to the free food bonanza. We’re that nice.

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Rigatoni with Broccoli Rabe

rivka — Tue, 12 May 2009 11:09:15 +0000

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you know by now that I’m a self proclaimed ingredient-adder. I’ve got issues leaving things simple: I find myself constantly tempted to tinker, to add just one more spice or sauce or vegetable or seed or something. I’ve been working on it, folks, really I have, but it ain’t easy.

As much as I’m inclined to clean out my pantry into a recipe, there are certain recipes that are not to be futzed with. One of those recipes is Marcella Hazan’s pasta with broccoli rabe. Hazan is a legendary Italian cook and cookbook author. Her directions are so very precise, her knowledge and expertise so colossal, I’d be crazy to fiddle with her ingredients or proportions.
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Quinoa Salad with Tofu, Beets, and Avocado

rivka — Wed, 06 May 2009 18:35:58 +0000

This is another installment of my “weekday lunch” series, where I offer suggestions for dishes that can hang out in your tupperware til 12:30 rolls around. For other weekday lunch options, see my weekday lunch archive page.

Here’s a super-easy salad that holds up very well in the tupperware container. It came together late one night when the contents of my fridge were scarce and I needed lunch for the next day. Red quinoa — available at Whole Foods and other similar stores, both in packages and in the bulk section — is a wholesome and nutritious grain, actually a berry, that takes about 15 minutes to steam. I cooked some quinoa (about 1 cup raw), chopped up two small beets I’d roasted earlier in the week, sliced up one avocado and one small block of teriyaki-marinated baked tofu, tossed them all together, and drizzled some rice vinaigrette over the salad (recipe below). It doesn’t get much easier than that. The bonus upside to bringing quinoa for lunch is that, unlike other grains, quinoa holds its shape and crunch very well even in the fridge overnight and in tupperware, and doesn’t tend to clump together or get sticky.

If you’re in a rush, this is really a perfect salad to throw together. And as always, feel free to improvise my recipe, adjusting for the contents of your fridge. I could imagine adding greens, red bell peppers, edamame, perhaps some raisins, even almonds or other sliced nuts for crunch. Get to it!

Rice Wine Vinaigrette

1 tsp. finely grated ginger or 1/2 tsp. powdered ginger
4 Tbsp. rice wine vinegar
1 tsp. sugar
1 tsp. soy sauce
1/2 Tbsp. lemon juice
3 Tbsp. olive oil
1 Tbsp. sesame oil

Combine all ingredients except for oil, and whisk vigorously. Add oil in a steady stream, whisking all the while, until well combined. Drizzle several Tbsp. of the dressing over the salad and toss to coat. Serve cool or at room temperature.
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Oven-Roasted Olives

rivka — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 11:50:59 +0000

In recent years, a slew of upscale pizza places have sprouted up to sate the ever-growing yuppie appetite for $13 (or $15, or $20) pies. Just look at Manhattan and Brooklyn: they’re bursting with fancy pizza points, from the old-school Lombardi’s and my favorite Grimaldi’s to the newer Roberta’s and Co., dreamt up by the breadmaster Jim Lahey. Washington is following suit, in its own more muted way, and by now we’ve actually got a few great spots for the ultimate Neapolitan treat.

One such spot, Two Amys, is a standby in this house. We pop over there at least once a month, and by now we’re buddy-buddy with a waitress, we know our favorite wine on the menu, and we’ve even found a bus that takes us, literally, from door to door.

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Spaghetti with Ramps

rivka — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 16:58:39 +0000

Hello out there! Sorry to have abandoned ship for the past week — due to Passover, I’ve been subsisting on a strange diet of matzah, farmers cheese, avocado, and salad. Not exactly the stuff worthy of a blog post. Most people would rather clean their bathroom than volunteer to host a dinner party the day after Passover ends, but moi? I’ve been itching to get back in the kitchen something serious. So yesterday, I did just that. I cooked up dinner for some of D’s law school friends and relished every minute of my time with my dishes, my kitchenaid, and best of all — FLOUR.

As if eating carbs again weren’t cause enough for celebration, have you looked outside? It’s Spring! The cherry blossoms here in DC are in full bloom (many are already past their bloom, which means the grass is blanketed in pink) and the weather this weekend has been just gorgeous — a perfect 76 and sunny today, in fact. I couldn’t be happier about the weather; so you better believe last night’s menu took full advantage not only of the end of the holiday, but of the start of my favorite season.

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Strawberry Avocado Salad

rivka — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 15:13:50 +0000

Not exactly a recipe, but this was a part of my Sunday morning breakfast last week and I couldn’t resist sharing it. It’s a sign of the warmer days that are (I hope!) just around the corner, and it’s a healthy and filling alternative to my usual morning grind. It’s also dead simple to make. So what are you waiting for?

Strawberry Avocado Salad

1 lb. pea shoots, arugula, or other nice-looking salad greens
1 pint strawberries, washed and sliced
2 avocados, sliced
champagne vinaigrette or other mild vinaigrette

Transfer the greens to a big salad bowl, and salt and pepper them. Distribute strawberry and avocado slices overtop. Drizzle the vinaigrette around the sides of the salad bowl, (in other words, dress the bowl, not the salad) and toss the salad around to coat very thinly with the dressing.

Serve with some crusty baguette, some good cheese, or even a bowl of good organic yogurt.

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Meringues (Finally)

rivka — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 00:54:32 +0000

For all those anticipating Passover, these meringues are the perfect Passover dessert. They require no flour or leavening, but actually taste good. I simply can’t go the week without them.

I was looking through my archived photos today and discovered something utterly shocking: I’ve had a website for…how long now? a year and a half?…and somehow escaped until today without posting a recipe for one of my most reliable, fool-proof, standby, can’t-live-without desserts. I make them all all all the time, especially when I have leftover egg whites. On top of being nearly effortless to make, they achieve one of the rare feat of being both non-dairy and delicious. Like I said, rare.

Meringues, my friends, meringues. They are a fundamental part of my dessert repertoire, and the basis for many other desserts (including, among others, this crazy buche de noel, and the ultimate meringue-based dessert, Macarons.

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The Makings of a Middle Eastern Lunch

rivka — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 02:51:27 +0000

Hard to believe it’s already Thursday and another Saturday is nearly upon us. I’m still thinking about last weekend’s 75-degree weather and super-chill Mediterranean style lunch. A trip to NYC will prevent me from repeating that meal this Saturday, but if I could, I would, in half a heartbeat. It’s the obvious way straight to my heart: breads, spreads, salad, and a glass of wine. Easy to please, no?

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Edamame Cabbage Slaw with Sweet Potatoes

rivka — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 16:30:00 +0000

Hello from vacationland! We’re in Israel for the next few days and beyond thrilled to be back. It’s been way, way too long — almost two years since I lived here. I’ve missed every bit of it. Yesterday, I spent the most lovely afternoon at the shuk (market) with my dear dear friend S. We met up in my favorite corner of the shuk… A little cafe tucked in the back portion that’s locals only and serves up a mean cup of coffee. After lots of hugs, kisses and catch up, we ran around to the different vendors so that I could grab my favorite spices (more on those in a future post…) And met up with her mom, where I freshened up on my slightly-rough but actually not-too-bad Hebrew. We spent the past 24 hours hanging out with family and friends, relaxing and eating copious amounts of food. Tonight we’re planning on hitting up another of my favorite restaurants, Tmol Shilshom. There’s something at once familiar and refreshing about being in a place I used to call home; it’s wonderful to be back.

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Braised Pearl Onions

rivka — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 21:20:43 +0000

Readers Dearest,
In a few short hours, I will be heading off for an all-too-short but nonetheless-exciting week-long vacation. While this means awesomeness for me, you’re probably not as excited. Here’s something to perk up your day: the post below is about a recipe that’s delicious and easy to make, best combo ever. Also, I’ve done my best to stick a couple posts in the wings, so as to keep you entertained and sated in my absence. Keep reading — more importantly, keep cooking — and I’ll be back in no time.

You can stop reading now if you’re an onion hater. Clearly, this isn’t for you. Where were we? Ah yes, pearl onions. They’re baby onions, basically. They’re a bit larger than pearls — at least, any pearls I can afford — but they’re certainly elegant. They come in red, yellow, and white — just like large onions — and you can get all three colors mixed together at Trader Joe’s.
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Zucchini Ricotta Tart

rivka — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 03:45:10 +0000

D and I host Friday night dinner pretty regularly. Being the slight lunatic that I am, prep usually starts on Tuesday, if not earlier. I start thinking about themes, poking around online and in my cookbooks for possible main courses, and trying to decide what vibe I want to create. Is this an apps and wine crowd, or more of a straight-to-the-table kind of meal? Are we going meat or dairy? (Usually we do dairy; I simply can’t part with butter for dessert.) Is it cold enough for soup or even a one-pot-meal? Etc.

This past weekend, D and I were so pooped from the long week that we decided to do just the two of us for dinner. Our friends Kira and Dina also wanted something low key, so we decided to combine forces. K and D would bring salad and a vegetable side, I’d make soup, some sort of tart, and dessert. We had challah in the freezer and plenty of wine on the rack.
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Best Cauliflower EVER

rivka — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 14:43:48 +0000

Before you get annoyed that the title of this post is dramatic without being descriptive, consider the following: this recipe has 6 ingredients, including salt. It takes 25 minutes start to finish and is easily the most delicious cauliflower dish I I’ve ever had ever ever. Ever. Better to tell the world how wonderful it is than to try to name what can only be described as good, yes?

Now then, let me tell you about cauliflower with capers and sherry vinegar. That’s all that’s in this — save for a drizzle or two of olive oil and a sprinkle of salt — but it’s good, lip-smackingly good. No surprise that it comes from the king of simple, Mark Bittman, and his wonderful bible “How to Cook Everything Vegetarian.” Having cooked from it and read many chapters straight through, I think I can safely say that it’s the best $23.10 you can spend in the cookbook section. Check it out here.

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“Too rich and dark” chocolate pudding

rivka — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 14:56:23 +0000

A while back, I made some chipotle chocolate pudding parfaits. Humbly speaking, they were pretty darn awesome. At least, I thought so. D? Not so much. She prefers snack packs, I guess. But I don’t give up so easily. There’s no way those gelatinous, tasteless pudding packs can beat homemade chocolate pudding. Armed with my best chocolate (callebaut 70%), organic whole milk, and a little bit of love, I set out to make chocolate pudding that D might like.

“It’s too dark and rich,” she said. Really, I can’t win around here.

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Polenta with Tomatoes, Shallots, and Goat Cheese

rivka — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 03:48:39 +0000

Forget Rachael Ray, with her hoarse voice and her annoying little mannerisms. I’ll show you a 30 minute meal — better yet, a 15-minute meal — that’ll have you at the table before you can say “EVOO“. It’s called polenta, and it’s really flippin’ easy. You can actually make it more quickly than I can write this post. And while I’ve included the recipe for polenta with tomatoes, shallots, and goat cheese, you can easily make it with something else. As always, I’ve listed several variations.

Polenta is basically poor man’s food: it’s simple, it’s cheap, it’s sustaining, and it’s dead-easy to make. All you need is cornmeal, salt, and water — ohh, and a fair amount of muscle for all the stirring you’ll be doing.
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Winter Salad with Pears and Manchego, My Catering Debut

rivka — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 02:56:59 +0000

Catering? Moi? Uh, NO. Not exactly. I’m flighty, forgetful, and a host of other wonderful things that don’t mix with catering. And yet, today, my mom and I cooked and served brunch to a party of 8 at their home. The brunch was an item that my mom had offered in a silent auction at work; I’m a sucker for all things food-related, so when mom enlisted my help, I happily agreed.

Can I tell you how utterly shocked I am that brunch today went PERFECTLY? I mean, without a hitch. Not a single issue. Nothing forgotten, undercooked, overcooked, gross-tasting; everything plated on time, ready to go, delicious. I’m in awe of my beginner’s luck. In awe, I tell you.

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What I did with my very last tomato

rivka — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 05:07:27 +0000

Yes, folks, it’s true: tomato season has come to a close. Back when I made this, in October, I wasn’t walking, it seemed pretty unlikely that I’d make it back to the farmers market to catch one last round of tomato madness, so I figured it was safe to assume that the tomato I ate that night was my last for the season. I’m a card-carrying member of the tomato lovers’ cult, so that’s not an easy thing to admit — but, like an old fling whose time has come to an end, I think I can walk away from this one with no regrets.

Running with that analogy for a minute: you’d like to think your last time with the fling would be the best there was to have, the best there ever would have been. But that’s never the case, is it? Usually the last time is just….fine. Such was the case with my last tomato. It wasn’t one of those specimens that could have been framed. No shiny, taut, glossy skin and jewel-like innards. Had it been perfect, I’d have eaten it raw, simply sliced with olive oil and fleur de sel. But I was already smack-dab in the middle of fall, and my tomato wasn’t so perfect. However, it was jam-packed with flavor, that I can assure you. So I prepared that last tomato in a dish that quickly became a standby this summer — a dish that’s perfect for celebrating tomatoes’ flavor even when their texture is somewhat imperfect. What’s that, you ask?

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Braised Sweet and Sour Red Cabbage

rivka — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 16:22:02 +0000

Not too long ago, I walked into my parents’ house and immediately caught wafts of the most fantastic aroma coming from (as always) the kitchen. I started sticking my fingers into each of the dishes sitting on the dining room table, eager to find the source. After trying most everything else on the table, I nonchalantly scooped up a pinch of cooked red cabbage, thinking not even a little that it might actually be the culprit. Boy, was I surprised. Divine, I tell you! And I don’t use that word all too often…but this truly is a recipe for the ages.

Turns out, it’s also dead simple; go figure. At my persistent begging, my mom passed along the recipe she’d used to make it. I tweaked it, as I am often wont to do, because when I see an ingredient in the fridge and think it might add something, I’ve no self control, not even an ounce. And while sometimes that habit ruins otherwise tasty cooking (insert gross story here), other times, I’m rewarded for my impulses. This cabbage most definitely benefited from my hyperactive ingredient-adding tendency.

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Steelcut Oatmeal with Peach Compote

rivka — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 20:30:29 +0000

Is it obvious I love breakfast? Between french toast casserole, cinnamon buns, vintage breakfast biscuits, shakshuka, and even simple bites like this one, I seem to have found my obsession. In keeping with my breakfast trend, here’s another maddeningly simple morning meal option: steelcut oats.

What are steelcut oats? They’re oats, really — but unlike quick oats, which are essentially slices of oats, steelcut oats are like large crumbs. They look more like Grape Nuts than Quaker. They’re also quite firm; they don’t crumble in your hand the way quick oats can. They take about 25 minutes to cook fully, which means you need to have a bit of time to cook’em up. But if you’ve got the time, you’ll be handsomely rewarded: cooked steelcut oats are like a thicker, homier version of grits or polenta, with a distinctly nutty flavor and lovely pot liquor. I also add a pinch of salt to the water for contrast, and a daub of butter at the end, a la Mandy, because it makes breakfast more luxurious. In my humble opinion, oatmeal is best topped with a splash of milk or half and half, and either a dollop of jam or a spoonful of fresh fruit compote. In this case, I used my very last summer peach to make a lovely quick compote that went perfectly with the oatmeal.
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