The Essential Rhubarb Pie

A Little Housekeeping Update

2009-11-04T11:56:00.003-05:00

I just wanted to let my readers know that I have just made TERP a little more search-friendly.

When I started TERP, I made my "recipes" very freeform. I started the blog with the idea that, "a recipe is just a story about food". In keeping with that line of thinking, my recipes were written like, "I cut up a chicken, added some spices, browned it in a pan, added some white wine..." My recipes were barely recipes. They were more like food streams of consciousness. Combine that with the fact that I didn't have photos in those days, there was no reason to wonder why I had no readers in the first few months!

I did eventually start putting my recipes in classic recipe format and eventually got a camera so I could photograph them, but I didn't catalog them well. I had posts tagged as "cooking", which might be either freeform recipes or links to other recipes, or else tagged as "recipes", which meant that the recipes were more explicit, or might also be linked to bloggers or websites.

I realized that if I wanted people to try my recipes, they had to find them. People don't want to look at a long list of assorted recipes. Cookbooks divide into chapters by recipe type. My blog should do the same.

I now have new categories that can help cross-reference the posts for easier viewing. I have these new categories:

Ingredient - You can now look for posts tagged as chicken, pasta, fruit, vegetables, etc.
Cakes
Cookies
Misc. Desserts
Pie (includes tarts)
Bars
Ice Cream
Barely Recipes - Anything freeform, written as a story, or "so easy you don't need a recipe"
Blogger Recipes - If I pilfered from your blog, you have your own category
Online Recipes - Posts where I linked to a recipe from a website

This was a big undertaking, but I'm glad I did it because I think it will make searching this site a bit easier. Enjoy.

Italian Restaurant Classic - Easy and Delicious

2009-11-02T17:35:00.007-05:00

When I say "Italian Restaurant" here, I'm not talking Babbo. I'm not talking Scarpetta. I'm not even talking Lusardi's or Mulino. I'm talking about your neighborhood "Red Sauce" joint.

I'm talking about the kind of restaurant that makes the kind of Italian-American classics that everyone grew up on as "Italian food". It's Italian food as intepreted by immigrants who had to cook their family recipes with the limitations presented to them by what was available in the U.S. They were also using new things that weren't available to them in Italy, but they liked. This was further refined and interpreted by their descendants.

These restaurants were once scoffed at as inauthentic by true aficionados of real regional Italian food, but they are finally getting their due. Italian-American food is a cuisine in itself and if done well, can still be delicious, whether they eat it in Italy or not.

A good red sauce place will always have certain dishes on its menu. There will be Chicken Cacciatore and Chicken Scarpiello. There will be Pork Chops Contadina and Steak Pizzaiola. There will be breaded chicken and veal cutlets (called "Milanese"). There will be Chicken, Veal, and Eggplant Parmigiana (and a good restaurant will spell it correctly). There will also be Chicken (and likely veal) Francese.

Why is it called Francese? What makes it French and why say French in Italian? ;-) It's a dish that is not just a favorite of your neighborhood Italian restaurant, but it's also a favorite of caterers. I even served it at my wedding. Although Chicken Francese can be interpreted a few different ways, it always contains eggs, butter, and lemon. This night I made it with garlic and white wine.

This recipe is so easy, you don't need a recipe.

Start with boneless, skinless chicken breasts that you have pounded a bit. You can use thighs too. Dredge them in seasoned flour and then dip them in egg.

Cook through in olive oil (about 2 tablespoons) and keep warm.

Add some garlic (about 4 cloves) and cook until fragrant.

Deglaze the pan with the juice of two lemons, a half a cup of white wine, and a half a cup of chicken broth. Allow to reduce a bit.

Add about two tablespoons of butter and swirl them in. Pour over warm chicken.

Serve with greens and maybe some roasted potatoes or pasta if you like.

In Thailand They Weep

2009-10-28T17:10:00.007-04:00

I'm having one of those weeks where budget is a big concern and I really need to conserve and reuse anything in my kitchen than I can.

In this case I happened to have some cilantro, a couple of hot peppers, and a part of a stalk of lemongrass left over from making my spicy Thai-style sweet potato soup. I decided that due to the leftovers, this week was now Thai Week, or perhaps it was Make a Thai Cry week.

What was my "Thai" recipe of choice?

Turkey burgers!

I blended those spicy seasonings into ground turkey in a way that would even make Rachael Ray cringe. Yes, I could have made them into sauce for chicken, but we had chicken for the past two days and we all know how much Kevin loves turkey burgers.

These were actually very tasty. The store was out of dark meat ground turkey, so I had to use that flavorless ground breast and the burgers were still good. I'd love to try them with beef.

I served it with a very nice salad, also in the Thai theme with mangoes and cucumbers and cilantro and lime.

Check out my veggies. I love that mandoline. I think I actually constructed the salad nicely. This would never have been done without the mandoline. I don't have the patiece or the knife skills (or I should say I don't have the patience that knife skills require).

See how pretty?

"Thai" Turkey Burgers

1 lb ground turkey (or ground meat of our choice)
1" piece of lemongrass, cut into manageable bits
1" piece peeled ginger cut in manageable bits
1 chili pepper (I only had jalapeno, but if you have a Thai chile, please use)cored and seeded
1 clove garlic
2 scallions (white part only)
1 small handful cilantro
2 tsp fish sauce
Juice of 1 lime

Place all ingredients in a food processor or other grinding device (I used the mini food processor that comes with my stick blender) except for turkey. Blend into a paste. Combine with turkey meat.

Divide meat into 4 patties. Cook according to your preferred method of cooking.

Mixed Veggie Salad

1 bell pepper
1 peeled cucumber
2 carrots
1 mango
Butter lettuce leaves
1/4 cup sesame oil
Juice of 1 lime
2 Tbl rice vinegar
2 Tbl honey (NOT chestnut honey)
1 Tbl fish sauce
1 small handful cilantro leaves
Green parts of scallions used above, diced

Cut pepper, carrots, mango, and cucumber into julienne strips.

Mix together the oil, lime juice, vinegar, honey, fish sauce, cilantro, and scallions. Place veggies in the dressing and let sit and soak in for a few minutes.

Serve on top of lettuce leaves.

Recommendation for My Local Peeps

2009-10-27T16:08:00.005-04:00

I'm not an Ace of Cakes kind of gal. Showy cakes aren't my thing. My primary concern for any party is a cake that tastes good. In fact, I would prefer my guests are more wowed more by the way my cake tastes than how it looks. Even for my own wedding I sought a cake that would taste divine and not look like Bernini threw up on it. I was lucky I found it at Wedding Cakes Online, but that's not whom this post is about.

That's one of the reasons I always like to make my own desserts for dinner parties. I know that when it comes to baking I don't have the most dexterity. I don't do pretty when it comes to sweets. What I like is quality. Any dessert that comes out of my kitchen is made with lots of love and the best ingredients I can afford. I prefer eating one of my lopsided cakes to something from a bakery that looks pretty, but tastes like a pile of sugar. (The other reason is that I'm a huge diva and I want to be loved and admired for my delicious desserts.)

This past weekend I threw a big surprise 50th birthday party for Sir Pickypants. I gathered about 30 of our closest friends and family members to a restaurant and sprung them on him. It was a great night.

When it came to dessert though, I knew it wasn't something I could do myself. I don't have the time or the kitchen to bake that much birthday cake. Also, let's face it, I don't want everyone I know looking at one of my lopsided cakes. I would need to go out and buy something. I needed a cake that would look respectable, but would make my chocolate-loving husband smile with joy over the taste.

Enter Nancy.

Who is Nancy? Well, she's someone I have known since I was in elementary school. Like many old school folks, we didn't see each other after high school graduation. I can remember certain things about Nancy from school. She had a sharp tongue on her when we were little (she and our friend DeeDee were dangerous together!). She and I were in the same Italian class in high school. Signora Miscella, the woman responsible for me being the one person in the world who doesn't mind Giada's accent, absolutely loved her "Nunziata" in that class. (In case you're going to ask, no Mrs. Miscella didn't favor me like she favored Nancy. She picked on me a lot, but once said I was one of her best students, then put on my report card that I frequently disturbed the class. It was weird.) I also had Nancy's little sister Susan in my group for a couple of summers when I worked as a day camp counselor.

When the reunion planning was in full swing and the Harrison High School Class of '88 finally began getting in touch with each other, I learned something. Nancy now had her own business.

Nancy's Cakes

Nancy's Cakes specializes in just the kind of cake I was looking for. There are no novelty cakes or overdone sugar mountains. These are just simple cakes with very high quality ingredients. When it came time to find a cake for Kevin's birthday party, there really was no other place to go.

I opted for a chocolate cake with raspberry filling and rich ganache on the outside. The filling had fresh raspberries inside (even got the seeds in my teeth to prove it) and sank ever so deliciously into the cake layers. The ganache was rich without being too thick and heavy. A more perfect cake could not have been imagined.

I know there aren't too many Westchester readers of this blog, but for all of you out there, I strongly recommend you give Nancy a try if you need a cake. You won't be disappointed.

It Just Won't Do...

2009-10-20T09:00:00.005-04:00

It just won't do
To dream of caramel
To think of cinnamon
And long for you

-Suzanne Vega

Those pesky apples. Apple picking seems like a good idea at first. You take a drive to some bucolic paradise awash in colorful foliage, then pay for the privilege of performing manual labor for a couple of hours. The next thing you know you're stuck with more apples than you know what to do with.

Well, it was my brother who did the apple picking with his family this time and he really went overboard. The silly thing about his apple abundance is that his kids don't like apples. They don't like any fruit at all. (He used to tease me about my being a picky eater as a child. Now I can laugh at him as his kids are pickier than I ever was.) He managed to unload his unwanted apples in the name of kindness and then I was stuck with the bounty.

I thank all of you food bloggers who have been making apples recipes these past couple of weeks. I surfed and debated and deliberated over which one I would use. I wanted to use them all, but even I didn'thave enough apples for that. While I sat around trying to decide which apple recipe was best I caught a bad cold, had a bad computer virus, and went on a business trip. I had little time or energy to bake and then post the results on a blog. The apples languished.

A few days ago the situation was growing desperate. I had eaten a few of the apples, but I still had plenty left and they were starting to go bad. I needed to do something with those apples right away.

Then I had the song go through my head. Cinnamon was meant for apples, but what about caramel? I didn't just want something to do with apples. I wanted something gooey and dreamy. I did some netsurfing and found this recipe for Caramel Apple Cake (apologies to all of my blog buddies whose recipes I didn't use).

This cake was incredibly simple. Once I had whatever I could salvage from the apples peeled and chopped, the batter came together very quickly. It uses vegetable oil rather than butter and I'm loath to use anything but butter in my cakes, but it did make for a fast recipe since I didn't have to spend a long time creaming and fluffing.

So I had my cake to help me think of cinnamon. Indeed as soon as I took this cake from the oven, the smell of cinnamon hit my nose in a way reminisent of my husband's embrace - passionate and yet comforting.

On top goes the caramel sauce. It's a simple sauce of brown sugar boiled with cream and butter. Initially the caramel sauce is more like a sticky frosting, but after a day or so, it settles into the cake more, rendering it beautifully sticky and gooey throughout.

So goodbye
Sweet appetite
No single bite
Could satisfy me

I served it here with a good dollop of whipped cream. Ice cream would be nice too. I think cinnamon ice cream would be great. Caramel ice cream would also be wonderful. Is there a caramel-cinnamon ice cream out there? Perhaps I should invent it!

October is the New November

2009-10-19T17:47:00.012-04:00

Over the weekend New York was suddenly covered under a nasty blanket of rain and cold. Ick ick ick. Me no likey! I'm supposed to be enjoying autumn, not bearing a winter blast. I didn't see any snow, but my mountain-dwelling horses did.

Food bloggers have picked up on a cold weather trend. When the cold hits, it's time to bake and it's time to braise. Slow-cooked soups and stews are on the menu when the temperature drops. I'm kind of weird that way that I cook the wrong things because I feel like it. That's why I fry chicken in 90-degree heat and make ice cream in February. I bake on a weekly basis all summer long.

This weekend I did manage to get it right. I really was in the mood for some slow-braised food. Of course in my household, the only thing I can braise is chicken. That's cool. I like braised chicken. For some reason my husband hasn't always appreciated the braised chicken recipes I've made for him. The effort I made making Ina Garten's coq au vin was a total flop. I did another recipe with white wine and mushrooms that also received a lukewarm response. Another braised chicken seemed risky, but I decided to go with my gut anyway. He knows he has two choices for dinner: Take it. Leave it.

It's autumn and it's time for apples, so I decided to start there. My chicken recipe isn't terribly original, but it was good.

Start by browning your chicken pieces well. I used assorted packages of thighs, legs, and breasts.

Next some onions go in that cook till translucent.

Add in some cider, brandy, sage, and chicken stock. (I managed to get a few more leaves out of my sage plant before it hibernates for the winter.) Reduce it down and put the chicken pieces back into the pan till cooked through.

Add a touch of cream before serving. Serve over noodles. NOODLES. Don't even think of serving it over anything else.

When I first added the liquids, I thought the flavors were too strong and aggressive, but by the time the dish was cooked, it was all sweet and mellow. Sir Pickypants loved it. This recipe is a keeper.

Speaking of keepers, in my previous blog I invented a new term for my recipes. If recipe is tasty and interesting and didn't flop, then obviously I want to post it on TERP. So a good recipe is TERP-worthy. Is that like spongeworthy? That's for you to decide.

Chicken in Brandy Cider and Cream Sauce

Assorted chicken parts of your choice

Salt and pepper

Olive oil for sauteeting

1 large onion, diced

1 Tbl chopped fresh sage

1 cup chicken stock

1 cup apple cider

1/2 cup brandy

1/4 cup cream

Cooked, buttered noodles of whatever shape you like

Season chicken parts with salt and pepper. Heat olive oil in a pan and brown the chicken well (about 10 minutes per side). Remove from pan.

Add onions to the pan and cook till translucent. Pour in the stock, cider, brandy, and sage. Do your best to scrape up EVERY. LAST. BROWN. BIT. FROM. THE. PAN. Thank you. Simmer and reduce down by about half. Return the chicken to the pan and let simmer for about 30 minutes, or until cooked through.

When chicken is cooked remove from pan and adjust sauce for seasoning. Add cream. Put chicken on top of your noodles and pour that sauce generously over it all.

Let's Talk Meatloaf!

2009-10-15T18:04:00.007-04:00

Yay. While I was away visiting clients in Washington D.C. and Radnor, PA, Kevin got the tech guru in his office to fix our computer. I am virus free and terrified to ever download anything ever again because of obtaining another virus. I want a Mac! *awaits flames from the PC crowd*

Anyway, let's get to what I cooked for Kevin to eat while I was gone.

Meatloaf. Bleah! When I was a kid I hated most things made of ground meat. I suppose I had a little of the affliction that Cathy's son had, because I hated ground meat that cooked long enough for a crust to form around it. I didn't like burgers unless they were either chargrilled (because the smoky taste kind of took over the burger) or served rare (back in those days, it was okay to feed stuff like that to your kids). Well-cooked ground beef was just gross to me in just about any dish. I would eat meatballs because they had soaked up the taste of the sauce sufficiently (unlike many small children, I actually liked tomato sauce on my pasta). Meatloaf was forbidden. I hated the flavor and the texture. The only thing worse than ground beef was ground turkey.

Many years later I'm cool with ground beef in most forms, but I'm still not a meatloaf lover. My husband on the other hand, always liked it. He had that comfort food association with it. However, beef gives him a rumbly in his tummy. He is fine with turkey loaf. For some reason I don't think ground turkey tastes as bad as I thought it did when I was six, but then again, I don't think it has much taste at all. Making a good turkey loaf was one of the big cooking challenges I had to face when I first married Sir Pickypants. I had to make ground turkey taste better and make it taste not too much like traditional meatloaf.

My first special meatloaf recipe was the Feathers and Fruit Loaf. It's moist and flavorful and not too dense, but it's also rather sweet. Sometimes you want something more savory. That's what I was craving a few nights ago when I decided meatloaf would be a good thing to have around the house while I was gone. My inspiration? Mushrooms! I made a turkey-mushroom loaf.

Mushrooms and onions cook up first. (Apologies to the Complaints Department Manager for the onions.)

Add them to the mixture with the seasonings. Serve with roasted potatoes and garlic-butter-roasted broccoli,

It was a big hit with the hubby. He gave me far more praise than the usual, "Very good. Thank you." He really loved it.

This was a TERP-Worthy recipe, so I'm sharing it with you. I used wholewheat breadcrumbs, which gives it a very earthy flavor. If you want something less strong, feeel free to use regular crumbs or bread as you see fit.

Mushroom Meat Loaf

1 lb ground turkey

10 ounces cremini mushrooms, thinly sliced

1 onion, diced

Olive oil for sauteeing

1 cup wholewheat bread crumbs

1 Tbl chopped fresh sage

1 Tbl chopped fresh thyme

1/2 cup milk

1 tsp salt

1-2 Tbl Worcestershire sauce

1-2 Tbl soy sauce

1 egg

Heat oven to 400 degrees.

In a skillet saute onions until soft. Add mushrooms until they are soft and give off their juices. Set aside to cool.

In a bowl mix together crumbs with herbs and salt. Add milk and allow to soften the crumbs up a bit. Mix in soy and worcestershire sauce.

When the 'shrooms are cool, add them to the crumbs. Give a final taste to make sure it's seasoned to your liking. Add the turkey meat and the egg and mix well. Shape into a loaf, place on a cookie sheet, and bake about 45 minutes to an hour.

Please Stand By

2009-10-09T08:48:00.003-04:00

We are experiencing technical difficulties. Please stand by.

When I was a kid watching TV with my brother, whenever the TV would go blank and play bad elevator music and the announcer's voice would tell us to, "Please stand by," my brother would make me stand by the television set. If I didn't literally "stand by", then the show would not come back.

Do they still do that on TV? Am I completely dating myself?

Anyway, I'm experiencing some technical difficulties of my own. My home computer is infected by a nasty and seemingly untreatable virus. We can't seem to find a program to scrub it. I confess I do a good bit of blogstalking and blog drafting during slow periods on my work computer as I'm doing now (Bad Rachel!) but the meat and potatoes of my blog, the fine tuning and photo loading, are done on my home computer. I don't want to do anything that is password protected on my computer until I know that spyware is out of there, so for now, I won't be blogging. I am also going on a business trip next week, so even though the problem will likely be resolved by then, I'll be away.

I will still be visiting blogs in my spare time on other computers and will make myself available on Facebook as well, so don't despair and don't think I've gone away. I'll be back. Hopefully I will be using the inspiration I have found from other bloggers to figure out what to do with the big bag of apples in my kitchen.

Do You Know Why I Love Donna?

2009-10-06T16:12:00.012-04:00

Why do I love Donna so much today?

Is it her cooking? Well, that's a bit plainly stated.

Is it her seamless way of blending sex, schmenkes, and food all together in one blog ('cause sex and food are really quite closely related if you love to eat)? Come on! That's why everyone loves her.

Is it that she makes me laugh? So many good blogs do...

Nope. Today it's because of this.

This is pierogi lasagne.

My hubby loves pierogies. He really loves them. I don't have time to make them totally from scratch, but I want to do something a little more special than throwing a bag of Mrs. T's in a pot. This *gulp* semi-homeade *eek* recipe is perfect. It tastes just like butter-soaked pierogies but you have to actually use a fork and knife to eat it.

I made this last night in anticipation of our 8th anniversary tonight. Pierogies take me back to the days when we were dating and often had dinner or breakfast at Just Like Mother's. (For our actual anniversary dinner, we ate at our favorite restaurant in our current neighborhood, Rani Mahal.)

Onions cooking in butter. Life isn't better than this.

Thanks for the recipe Donna. I may have this one stuck to my hips forever, but it's so worth it!

New Kid in Town Part 5 - La Herradura

2009-10-01T09:31:00.004-04:00

Restaurants are cropping up fast and furious on my strip. I've reviewed the three new Asian places and the new barbecue place. (The new bar and grill isn't worth a visit, let alone a review.) Now we have a new Mexican place.

We have a pretty strong Latino population in my town and the businesses are starting to reflect that. We have Latin groceries and a few hole-in-the-wall Mexican and Peruvian places, with a Guatemalan bakery currently under construction. We also have a large, typical Tex-Mex place. When La Herradura opened, I wondered if it would lean more towards the flashy Tex-Mex Americanized Mexican food or towards something more authentic and regional. A few nights ago, I was able to find out.

The owners of Herradura have two other restaurants in neighborhing towns and the buzz seems to be that the growth has worked against the quality of the food, but I'm not picky about Mexican. Give me some salsa and cheese and really I'm quite happy. It would have to be Taco Bell before I'd turn my nose up at it.

Would you believe this place was a very minimalist Japanese restaurant for many years? They did quite a job fixing this place up in a fairly short period of time.

Here is the menu. It's real leather. You can smell it when you open it up. I like the horse theme. The menu advertised beer, wine, and margaritas, but the liquor license hadn't come through yet, so we couldn't get any. Kevin seemed more disappointed than I was.

We started with chips and salsa, which I didn't photograph. The salsa wasn't my favorite. It was a little too salty and a little too garlicky. I like the fact that it differentiated itself from some of the other restaurants in the area, but they needed to tone down the flavors a bit.

They had a really great selection of tacos on the menu, but I opted for chicken in mole poblano sauce. The chicken was nicely chargrilled, but not the least bit dried. The sauce was sweet and smoky. Very well done. Kevin had a shrimp dish, which I also neglected to photograph and he really really loved it. The refried beans were exceptional. Although they were a little runny, they had a little tang to them and were kind of creamy.

The server saw me with the camera and offered to take our picture. Well why not?
Dessert was fried ice cream for Kevin. I had tres leches cake that was totally inauthentic. It was really chocolate layer cake, soaked in something milky, and coated with a kahlua buttercream. It was very good taste-wise, but it wasn't tres leches cake.

We definitely had an enjoyable dinner here, so we will definitely be back in the future.

Soon we'll be getting a new Italian place, yet another Asian place, a new American place, and a yet-to-be-advertised as any ethnicty place. More reviews to come.

An Excellent Lunch

2009-09-30T08:07:00.010-04:00

Monday I had the wonderful privilege of finally meeting the hilarious and talented Sue in person. We had lunch at the Spice Market, one she recommended, in Chelsea (right near the Food Network studios). I have to tell you this is a great restaurant.

Here it is from the outside. It's quite large and very airy with plenty of open-air seating.

This is the section we ate in.
After the rapturous few minutes of seeing each other in person for the first time, we got down to the business of drinking. I had a raspberry and lychee bellini. Sue had a Singapore Sling. I had heard of them, but never drank one before. I took a taste and found it was a great drink. Sue said they're normally not made with so many fresh juices and tend to be sweet and chemical-laden. I am now thinking I must try a chemical-laden Singapore Sling in the future. My raspberry cocktail was quite delicious.

Onward to lunch. We opted for the Bento Box, which consists of soup, salad, and some small bites.

Here is why my lunch was so extraordinary. See that object in the lower, left-hand corner. That's a piece of cod. I ate that piece of cod. I didn't just take a bite and push it aside. I ate that entire piece of cod. Believe me, when you put fish on my plate, the likelihood that I will take more than a bite or two is really small. This cod was wonderfully crispy on the outside, was served with a tasty sauce, and the fishiness, while certainly present, was faint enough that I could tolerate it. I think it was the best piece of fish I have ever made myself eat. I would never order it in a restaurant and I would be a little upset if a friend tried to serve it to me for dinner, but I am happy to say it was actually edible.

The rest of the plate consisted of sate skewers, squash soup, papaya salad, and a small spicy vegetable salad. Each box comes with two skewers of your choice of meat, so Sue had the chicken and I had the pork and we swapped one each. They were really good. Sate can be such a throwaway dish in many Thai restaurants. The meat is often dry and it's just meant to be something you dip into sauce for an appetizer. This is not true at the Spice Market. The meat for both skewers was tender and delicious. The soup was also very tasty, and that's something pretty special too because squash is not my favorite vegetable and if you want to serve me squash soup, you had better do a really good job. The papaya salad was also amazing with lots of cashew nuts.

Lunch came with their speciality soft drinks. Mine was cherry yuzu and Sue had a homemade ginger ale. I liked the fact that neither of these were too sweet and both had powerful flavors. I had never had yuzu before. I really loved the floral taste in the soda.

Next was dessert. We opted to each order one of the dessert options and split them. There was Ovaltine kulfi and Banana-Macadamia ice cream. The kulfi was interesting. I think of kulfi as more ice-cream-like. This was served almost at room temperature. It was like malty fudge. The caramelized bananas it was served with were wonderful.

The ice cream was also delicious. It had a powerful banana taste with a hint of cinnamon. Unfortunately, it only contained two macadamia nuts. I had both of them. Poor Sue. She never got a single nut (unless you count the company).
The ice cream came packaged in a cute little takeout container.

We took a stroll through Chelsea Market after lunch. I had never been there before. I go into the city pretty often, but I really hadn't been in that neighborhood for years. There isn't much there as I might have hoped in terms of food and cooking shops. There is this cool fountain. It's a big water spout that empties into a wishing-well-like bottom that goes down pretty deep.

We found a cookware supply store. There was plenty of cool stuff in there.

Need a tagine?

How about stock pots on the ceiling?
Excellent day all in all. There is nothing like sharing good food with other food bloggers.

Good Ideas, Bad Ingredients

2009-09-25T16:05:00.009-04:00

I bought some beautiful pork chops at the farmer's market over the weekend. These were free-range chops I bought from the same people who sold me that infamous sausage.

I wanted to do something fun with them. I had all sorts of suggestions from people such as just grilling them (which means trotting out the grill pan and filling my apartment with smoke) or coating them with parmesan (not going to work for the hubby). I realized I wanted something sweet, maybe a bit spicy. I didn't have much money to help me shop for new ingredients, so I raided my kitchen to see what I could come up with.

I sprinkled the chops with salt and pepper and browned them in a pan.

Then I glazed them with a mixture of:

1/4 cup orange juice
2 Tbl honey
1 tsp chipotle powder
1/4 tsp cumin
Pinch of salt

Then they went into a 400-degree oven for about 5 more minutes.

They look fine although not particularly special in this photo. The were good accompanied by some roasted yellow grape tomatoes, but here was the issue.

I don't know what made me buy this honey (it was Italian?). I had bought it a couple of weeks earlier and almost forgot about it. had never seen chestnut honey before. I was very curious. How would it differ from other honeys?

How did it differ? A lot! It's gross. Chestnut honey is nasty. It did no favors to my citrus-and-spice flavors in the glaze. I had hoped once the chops were cooked that the flavor would have mellowed out. Nope. It was as bad coming out of the oven as it was going in. Ick poo! Don't buy this stuff ever! It's way too expensive to be this bad.

Good thing the pork was wonderful because otherwise dinner would have been traumatic.

Meatballs and Mushrooms

2009-09-16T16:27:00.012-04:00

If there is one food my husband always consistently loves, it's things made of ground turkey. He loves his turkey burgers and turkey meatloaf and turkey meatballs. Of course it's not my favorite meat. I find it kind of dry and flavorless, but since I can't make these things with beef, I've come up with ways to make ground turkey meals taste better.

The time had come around for a ground turkey meal. I just wasn't feeling burgers and meat loaf. I wanted something else. I thought about Swedish meatballs made with turkey. I have mucked around a bit with different ways of making them -all of them were totally inauthentic. Still, the idea of meatballs in gravy was speaking to me. It seemed like a really nice comfort food for someone who is recovering from a raging infection in her nether bits.

Swedish meatballs are traditionally seasoned with allspice, cooked in a somewhat creamy gravy, and then served with lingonberry jelly on the side. They're also made with beef. I'm dealing with a guy who is lactose intolerant and also claims beef irritates his widdle tum-tum so I leave tradition behind right out the gate.

My meatballs contained dried cranberries and were cooked in a "gravy" made in the style of a traditional veloute`. (Oh look! Last week's Top Chef has influenced me yet again.) I happened to have homemade chicken stock in the freezer, so I lucked out. I have taken to browning my meatballs in the oven because they hold their shape better and cook more evenly.

I added mushrooms and sherry to my sauce for a more complex flavor as well. I love sherry with mushrooms. In order to make these even more health-conscious, I served them over brown rice instead of noodles.

Meatballs in Mushroom Sauce

1/4 cup wholewheat bread crumbs

1/4 cup dried cranberries

1/4 tsp nutmeg

1/4 tsp allspice

1 tsp salt

1 pound ground turkey breast

1 egg

Olive oil for sauteeting

2 Tbl butter

2 Tbl flour

1 medium-to-large onion, diced (How much do you like onions?)

10 oz. sliced cremini musrhooms

4 cups chicken broth.

2 Tbl sherry

2 Tbl chopped fresh parsley

Salt and pepper to taste

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Spray a baking sheet with cooking spray.

Mix togeher crumbs, cranberries, nutmeg and allspice. Give it a taste to make sure you like the seasoning, and then add the turkey and eggs. Mix well and shape into balls. Place on tray and cook 15 minutes.

Cook onion in a large pan until they begin to turn transparent. Add 'shrooms and cook till soft. Remove from pan.

Heat butter in pan with flour and cook until the floury taste is gone, but don't let it get dark. Whisk in chicken stock quickly, and keep stirring until thick. Add sherry and season with salt and pepper as needed. Add mushrooms, onions, and meatballs to the pan and cook till meatballs are heated through.

Fun With Farro (and how the illness came in handy)

2009-09-15T10:33:00.012-04:00

Hmm...maybe fun isn't the right word. Well, it started out fun.

Farro has been one of the new ingredients I've wanted to try for quite some time. I've had it only once at my recent birthday dinner at Tarry Lodge, where I had a delcious farro salad as an appetizer.

I wanted to make a side dish that would be similar to the one I had a Tarry Lodge, especially since corn is in season for a little while longer.

After making a huge batch of the stuff, I went for my camera and realized the battery was dead. I would have to charge it. Yes, I know that happens to me a lot on this blog. I never pay attention to the state of my battery until it's too late.

Well, luck was on my side. Then again, I don't think luck is the right word considering what I went through that night. After eating that farro alongside a lovely NY strip steak, I felt kind of funny. At 1:30 AM I woke up feeling beyond funny. I had blood coming out of places I have never seen blood. After two hours of not being able to sleep due to pain, I finally roused the hubby out of bed to take me to the ER. I was diagnosed with a raging bladder infection. Thank goodness for Greenwich Hospital. They saw me quickly, made me very comfortable, and gave me my first dose of medicine so I could start recovery right away.

Anyway, that leaves me home all day to take photos of my leftover farro with my now-charged camera. I had a leisurely day to put it on the good plates, drape the work area, and play with camera angles.

As I pointed out earlier, I served this alongside steak for myself. I deglazed the pan with brandy and added some butter to pour over the top. For Kevin I made tilapia in a meuniere sauce (I guess I have been very influenced by Top Chef lately) which he loved (is there anything that won't taste good with brown butter poured over it?). I do have leftovers that I could hypothetically take photos of, but leftover meats don't really look that appetizing.

I think I would have done what they do at Tarry Lodge if I made this again and grilled the corn first before cutting it off the cob. I think some bacon would be great with this as well, but that desire probably comes from the fact that at Tarry Lode, I ate my farro with a giant plate of prosciutto.

I realized when I was mixing a dressing that I was out of red wine vinegar, which was my first choice for vinegar. I used citrus champagne vinegar instead and then added some lemon zest to stay on the theme. By all means if you want to make this with red wine vinegar, use it. This is a dish meant to be played with.

I'm Not Andy Nusser Farro
1 package farro
2 quarts water
Olive oil for frying
1 medium red onion, diced
2 cloves garlic
Kernels scraped from about 2 medium ears of corn
1 small green pepper, diced
1 pint grape tomatoes
1/4 cup olive oil
3 Tbl citrus champagne vinegar
2 Tbl chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
Zest of one lemon
Salt and pepper to taste

Cover farro with water and allow to sit for 25 minutes. Drain and put in a pot and cover with 2 quarts of water (or stock) and bring to a boil. Simmer 25 minutes. Drain.

In a large pan heat some olive oil and add garlic and onion and cook till fragrant. Add the corn, peppers, and tomatoes. Heat until tomatoes start to get a little burst and wrinkly. Add some salt and pepper if desired.

Mix together oil, vinegar, parsely and lemon zest. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Add to cooked farro. Toss with vegetables and parsley and serve.

Tip of the Day

2009-09-11T08:57:00.005-04:00

The leftover crostini you have in the freezer from last week's dinner party are pretty good ground up and reused in your meatballs.

A Failed Final Sweet Treat and an End-of-Summer Dinner for the Funnest People on Earth

2009-09-04T12:07:00.012-04:00

Here's something funny. My husband takes extreme offense at the photo of the sausage from two posts down. He said it looks like someone's intestines. Well, Kevin it is someone's intestines! That's what sausages are. Well, Sue did say that it looked like a science experiment. I hereby promise never to put photos of long ropes of raw sausage again (unless of course it's hilariously funny to do so).

So summer ends unofficially. :-( Yes, it's still officially summer and we'll still have summer weather for a few weeks, but the pools are all closed, so the heat isn't as much fun.

At least I was able to send summer out with a bang. Most people barbecue on Labor Day. Me? I have to be different. I actually cooked dinner inside on the stove and served it inside. I'm such a rebel. (Well, actually it's because I don't have a grill or a backyard to put one in, but that's a minor, piddling detail).

Our guests this weekend were Bryan and Jenny, mentioned in previous posts as The Funnest People on Earth. I love getting together with them, and like many friends we have in our adult lives, we don't see them often enough. The last time they came over for dinner was last year when they shared the Summer Solstice with us. They have been with us for the official beginning of summer and now they're with us for the unoffical end of summer.

So what was on the menu?

I started with what I called a "Crostini Bar". I put out the toasted bread slices and then let the guests select their toppings. I had roasted peppers, sherry mushrooms (and the crostini recipe is here too), homemade lemony pesto (it was very improvised, so I can't really give you a recipe), and fresh mozzarella cheese. Everyone could top the bread how he or she wanted in whatever combinations would suit the fancy.

The cheese was to die for. It has been freshly made that morning and I couldn't keep my hands off it!

The next course was a chilled tomato soup. I wanted to do a gazpacho, but I just wasn't feeling gazpacho. I have been eating cucumbers and green peppers out the wazoo lately and also making a fair amount of gazpacho. It was becoming like a liquid salad to me. BOR-ING.

For my new soup I added roasted peppers and some cloves of roasted garlic to the tomatoes. Then I added some sherry, paprika, and ground almonds. Although it wasn't gazpacho, I felt it had some Spanish flair to it.

I forgot to take a photo of the actual soup. All I have is a photo of the tureen on the table. Don't you just love soup tureens?

The main course was chicken in figs and wine again, but I tweaked the recipe from the last time. I liked my previous recipe, but I was slightly disappointed in it. I felt it was a little on the sweet side, almost bland, and the caramelized onions needed some balance.

I tweaked the recipe by adding extra pancetta and using garlic instead of caramelized onions. I even threw some sage in with the wine and broth. I liked this recipe even better than the first one. It had a smoky sweet quality without being overly sweet. One of my best recipes.

I served it on polenta squares. I had to buy that crappy store-bought polenta in a tube because I was shopping close to home at my local grocery stores and none of them carry the polenta you have to cook. I mixed the stuff in the tube with some salt and parmesan, spread it in a pan, spinkled some oil and a little more parmesan on top and baked it till it held together nicely.

Dessert was the last recipe from the book that I plan to do for a while.

I did a sheet cake, a banana cake, a chocolate pound cake, two kinds of bar cookies, and one plain brownie. The only thing I hadn't done was a layer cake. The book has an overwhelming number of layer cakes and it's hard to choose one. Most of them seem very much alike. Some have milk and some have buttermilk. Some have a little more butter or another eggs. Most of them have the same amounts of chocolate in them. I'm sure I could tell the difference in textures if I tried them side by side, but I don't know how I'd know the difference otherwise.

I chose one called Chocolate Velvet Cake. I thought it was nice and festive, which was important since Bryan's birthday was a couple of weeks ago. It looked easy enough. I was going to cover it with white chocolate frosting and sprinkle chocolate toffee bits over it. (I found some nice toffe chunks at Trader Joe's. Why didn't I think of going there when I make the coconut and toffee bars last weekend?)

Well, things did not go as planned. The cakes baked up nicely, but they were very delicate. While tranferring the top layer, it fell apart. I tried to use the frosting to glue the cake back together, but it all just collapsed under the weight. The frosting itself was an unappealing off-white color. The cake was a mess and there was no way I would serve it. I scrapped it. I did try it before I scrapped it. The cake was good, but it really didn't taste that different from a cake one would buy at a commercial bakery.

Now what? I needed a dessert. I still had some chocolate in the house. I also happened to have milk, cream, butter and those toffee bits.

First I went to work on brownies. I went with the simple, classic "One-Bowl" recipe you get on the Baker's box. Susan once said it's the best brownie recipe of them all. I suppose one could argue about whether or not it's the best, but it's certainly the easiest.

Next I mixed up some ice cream. I made chocolate ice cream and tossed those chocolate toffee bits in it.

So here was my dessert. Brownies with chocolate-toffee-nut ice cream. Not a bad ending for improvisation!

Now for the recipes...

Tomato and Red Pepper Soup
2 pounds tomatoes
3 red bell peppers
4-6 cloves of garlic, unpeeled (I used a smaller number because I had HUGE cloves)
1 cup almonds, roasted and ground
2 Tbl sherry
1 tsp paprika
Salt to taste

Score an X in the tomatoes and drop them into boiling water for about two minutes or until the skin starts to peel away. Drop them in cold water immediately and peel off the skins. Squeeze seeds from tomatoes then put seeds through a strainer to get the juice. Chop into chunks.

Cut peppers in half and lightly brush with olive oil. Place on baking sheet with garlic cloves (also sprinkled with olive oil). Roast at 400 degrees for about 10 minutes or until skins start to blacken and bubble. Place peppers in plastic bags for a few minutes. Slip skins off. Also remove garlic cloves from their skins.

Place peppers, tomatoes, juice, garlic and almonds in food processor and puree till smooth. Add sherry, paprika, and salt.

Chill and serve.

Chicken in Figs and Wine 2
4 boneless, skinnless chicken breasts
Flour for dredging
Salt and pepper
4 oz. pancetta, chopped into little bits
4-6 cloves of garlic (again, I had HUGE cloves, so I used 4)
16 figs (preferably black mission) sliced
1 cup white wine
1 cup chicken stock
6 sage leaves
1 Tbl butter

Cook pancetta in skillet until crispy. Remove from pan.

Dredge chicken breasts in flour, salt and pepper.

You may find you have a little excess pancetta grease. You can drain off some of it, but don't get rid of all of it. You want that flavor. If you think you don't have enough, add a little olive oil to the pan.

Brown chicken breasts well on both sides. Remove from the pan and keep warm.

Cook garlic for a minute or two until fragrant. Add wine and stock and make sure you get up every last little brown bit from the pan. Add figs and sage and simmer till reduced by about half.

Add chicken breasts back into pan until cooked through. Remove from pan and swirl the butter into the sauce.

Serve breasts topped with sauce. Sprinkle with pancetta bits.

If you want to get fancy, removed the figs with a slotted spoon and strain sauce before topping the chicken with it.

While cooking and baking all day I make myself hot dogs for lunch. I mixed up a pretty cool relish by using up odds and ends of condiments in the fridge. This is peppadew peppers, capers, and cornichons chopped up with some tomato paste.

Sweet Treat of the Week - This One's For The Boss

2009-08-31T19:50:00.009-04:00

I apologize for the lack of a Sweet Treat last week. Once again, time and especially money were an issue. I've noticed all weekend that the blogs I read and follow have been quite active and I'm behind in my reading again. I must catch up soon!

We were invited for dinner to the home of Kevin's boss at his fabulous little weekend retreat in Westport CT (rather than gigantic apartment on Central Park West previously mentioned on this blog). He was entertaining some coworkers and clients in celebration of landing a really big website project. I, of course, can't be invited to someone's home without bringing along a dessert. When Kevin asked Head Honcho if I could bring something, the response was "chocolate", so of course I made it an official Sweet Treat and hit the book.

I chose my recipe purely for the convenience factor. I still had coconut left over from last week's blondies, so I chose another coconut bar.

This recipe was toffee, chocolate chip bars. The coconut-based bar cookie had dark chocolate chips and chocolate-covered toffee bars broken up into them.

I just had one problem. Heath bars for some reason are not readily available where I live. You can get them in CVS, but not in supermarkets. I didn't want to make two trips. I ended up with these.

This had lots of little, itty-bitty toffee bits throughout the chocolate. It was tasty, but the toffee didn't shine through as much. I had a similar problem when I wanted to replicate one of my favorite ice creams last summer and couldn't find Heath bars in the supermarket.

The bars were cooked pretty much like a brownie with butter melted and mixed with eggs and vanilla and stirred into the dry ingredients.

They were almost cake-like in texture and a little difficult to cut and remove from the pan. I liked them, but like many recipes from this book, wasn't bowled over by them. Kevin's coworkers felt differently though. They were the first things to go from the dessert table!

Pefect Pasta Lunch

2009-08-26T10:00:00.007-04:00

In my last post I mentioned a nice trip I made to the farmer's market this weekend. I didn't just pick up tomatoes and a pepper. I also picked up some kale, some onions and some carrots. You know what else I picked up?

Free-range spicy Italian sausage!

Is this one of the most beautiful sausages you have ever seen? **Awaits comment from Donna**

I had a nice dinner with the spicy chicken, but I needed something tasty and reasonably healthful for lunch. I squished my brains around a bit and came up with a new, simple pasta dish.

First I sauteed some onions and LOTS garlic (Did I write a post about restraint? Why?). Then I added the kale.

I cut the sausage into links and cooked it separately. Then I sliced it up and added it to the kale. I threw in a splash of white wine for good measure.

I tossed in a box of whole wheat rotelle and then plenty of ricotta cheese for creaminess and parmesan for saltiness.

Don't you just want to eat this? (Donna may have an interesting answer for this one too.)

Rotelle with Kale and Sausage

Ingredients

1 pound spicy Italian sausage
2 small onions (or one large-to-medium one), finely diced
4-6 cloves of garlic, minced
2 Tbl olive oil
1 big bunch of kale, cut into small pieces
1/2 cup white wine
1 pound part-skim ricotta
1 pound whole-wheat (or regular if you prefer) rotelle
Copious amounts of grated parmesan

Cut sausage into links and cook separately. Cut into slices.

Heat olive oil in a large pan. Cook onions until soft. Add garlic and cook until fragrant.

Add kale and cook down.

Add in sausage and wine. Allow wine to evaporate off.

Meanwhile cook pasta according to package directions. Drain and mix into the kale mixture. Stir in ricotta and parmesan. Add salt to taste.

Making Use of The Tomato

2009-08-25T10:41:00.009-04:00

It all started with the Little Old Italian Man who lives in my building.

You know the type. I think every neighborhood has one (at least every neighborhood in NY does and I'd wager they have them in NJ too). He's a short dude, retired from his day job, has an Italian accent, works tirelessly in his garden - no matter how small - until the day he dies. He hangs with his goombas at a particular spot in the neighborhood chatting in Italian colloquialisms and has a family connection everywhere for everything he needs. He's always very sweet and he can help you with just about anything because he has relatives in every business.

The day I came home from the nursery this spring with my supply of herbs and flowers for my balcony "garden" Little Old Italian Man spotted me hauling it all upstairs in the elevator via shopping cart. He asked me where I bought my plants. I said Tony's Nursery. He scolded me for spending all of that money at the fancy nursery. He could have gotten me cheaper plants (Don't ask me from where). Then he offered me tomatoes. He could get me tomatoes. I questioned whether or not our balconies really had space for tomato plants. He assured me it would not be a problem. After a brief visit where he inspected the space I still had left, he brought me two plants.

I put the plants out and waited.

And waited.

Then I waited some more.

It rained all through June. In July I saw a few flowers. Then I saw some tiny little orbs.

Finally, last week, I got this. *

This was one of three tomatoes that managed to make it to maturity. One of them looks just like this. One of them is still in the process of turning red.

It pained me to pluck my two ripe tomatoes. What would I do with them? They were so small and once I plucked them, there wasn't likely to be more.

I can't take them with me, so I had to eat them eventually before they just rotted away. I decided to make a nice, light summer chicken dish that would incorporate my two precious little tomatoes, along with some other plum tomatoes from the farmer's market.

Here is a photo of both my tomatoes and the market ones for scale. I told you my little 'maters were small.

My dish was nothing particularly fancy. I spiced up some chicken breasts and then created a nice, cooling salad to go on the side of them. I used tomatoes, black beans, cilantro, lime, and a green pepper that I also bought at the farmer's market.

A light refreshing meal for the summer. We needed it because we had been eating like gluttons all weekend.

*My husband took this great photo. I really should make him take all of the photos for this blog. He's much better at it than I am and he has a nicer camera.

Spiced Chicken Breasts with Tomato-Black Bean Compote

Ingredients

4 boneless, skinless chicken breast halves
2 Tbl olive oil
1 Tbl chipotle powder
1 tsp cocoa powder
1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp salt
4 Plum tomatoes, diced
2-3 Tbl chopped fresh cilantro
1 can black beans, rinsed and drained
Juice of two limes
1 tsp salt

Combine last five ingredients and set aside while you work on the chicken so that the flavors have a chance to meld.

Combine chipotle, cocoa, cumin and the 1/2 tsp salt. Rub liberally all over the chicken breasts. Heat olive oil and saute chicken breasts until cooked through. You can also grill them if that's what floats your boat.

Slice chicken breasts and serve alongside the compote. Or serve them on top of the compote. Or serve them underneath the compote. Whatever you like.

Sweet Treat of the Week - A Slightly Troublesome Cake

2009-08-22T02:24:00.008-04:00

What did the book have for me this week?

I chose a chocolate pound cake. I wanted something simple, a sort of "dump and stir" kind of recipe. I didn't want complications or the need for multiple layers or multipe add-ins. I wanted something that would travel well as I was invited to a barbecue.

The trouble started when I neglected to double-check the recipe when I shopped for ingredients. It wasn't until I started to actually bake the cake that I realized I didn't have everything I needed.

First I needed superfine sugar. I had about a cup's worth in the cupboard, but I needed three times that amount. I read many years ago that whizzing your regular sugar in the food processor could substitute for superfine sugar, so I did that.

Then I realized I needed a vanilla bean. The recipe called for vanilla extract and a scraped vanilla bean. Once again, my chocolate treat is missing vanilla. I looked for something flavorful to boost the chocolate. I thought about Ina Garten's love of adding coffee. I had none (which was odd because I usually keep instant coffee granules around for baking). I was hoping I might have some Kahlua stashed away in the liquor cabinet - no dice. I opted for a small amount of rum.

The recipe said to line the pan with paper. I couldn't figure out how to line a Bundt pan with paper. It gets all wrinkly and crinkly. I decided to just grease and flour the pan really well and hope for the best.

As far as Bundt cakes go, this one rose really nicely and filled the pan. It was not the skimpy Bundt cake I so detest and fear. Unfortunately, it did stick a little in some spots. I did what I could to cover it up by making some chocolate royal icing and covering those patches up. Unfortunately, I poured the milk in too quickly and the glaze was too thin. I didn't have enough powdered sugar to thicken it back up. When I attempted to pour the stuff onto the cake, it just dripped right off. It made for some nice leakage during transport as well.

Yokelson is so incredibly precise with cooking directions. In her recipes, you don't just cream butter until it's fluffy. You cream it for 3 minutes. She has very precise times for every ingredient you add to the mixing bowl. It makes a real difference in the texture of the batter.

The cake, despite the holes and drips came out pretty well. It had a cup of cocoa in it and so was very chocolately. The precise mixing times really did make for a nicely-texture cake with a very fine crumb.

Email me for the recipe if it looks good to you.

Fig and Caramelized Onion Chicken - And a few thoughts

2009-08-18T08:47:00.013-04:00

When it comes to cooking, one of the things I believe every beginner cook needs to learn is restraint.

Twenty years ago when I decided it was time to expand my kitchen skills beyond baking desserts and that I should start cooking actual real food, I didn't know the meaning of restraint. I had a taste for spicy food and a desire to show the world I wasn't afraid of the spice rack. Every flavor I could add to a dish was new and exciting and everything I had on hand was poured into the pot. Then there was the garlic. Garlic was the king of flavors and if the recipe said to use two cloves, I used four. No recipe could have enough garlic.

I look back on those days and realize I was making a mistake, however well-intentioned and enthusiastic, and that many beginner cooks make the same one. Unfortunately, there is a school that encourages this type of cooking. Check out any cooking show aimed at beginners and you'll see what I mean. Sandra Lee adds herbs and "seasoning packets" to bottled Italian dressing and then throws herbed cheese into the dish. Rachael Ray's recipes often have upwards of 15 ingredients in them and she never goes without garlic. How many years did I cook before I learned that "Italian" was not synonymous with "reeking of garlic"? It's very easy when you're a beginner cook to want to explore your spice rack. Every jar seems intriguiging so you just want to use them all.

Somewhere along the line, I learned to hold back. I've discovered that in many dishes a few, simple, complimentary flavors can pack as much power as a shelf full of spices. "Simple" is not the same thing as "bland". In fact, sometimes taking the less-is-more approach can make a dish seem more flavorful because the distinct tastes of each ingredient are left to shine. Yes, chicken goes with anything, but let the chicken be a chicken instead of making it nothing more than a vehicle for a sauce. (Now I'm hearing Tom Colicchio telling me to "Honor the Protein".)

I think one of my favorite examples of this is the cacciatore I made a few months ago. I kept my ingredients to a minimum in that dish: chicken, onions, green peppers, mushrooms, tomatoes, wine. I thought my cacciatore was very fresh tasting. I know that if I had made that same dish twenty -or even ten - years ago, I would have added several cloves of garlic, a spoonful of oregano, basil leaves, and who knows what else (rosemary perhaps). I don't think adding all of that extra flavor would have really done that much more for the dish. The simple taste of the vegetables was perfect on its own. Readers may notice my marinara sauces tend to stick to just red pepper, garlic, tomatoes, and basil with the occasional onion or cup of wine. Why bury the star ingredient - tomatoes - under too many herbs?

So now that I've given my lecture for the day, you may be asking what this has to do wtih my recipe.

My recipe today sticks to the principle that one should show a little restraint and simply add a few lovingly-treated ingredients to create a stellar dish. I came up with this recipe because figs are readily available right now and since I discovered the joy of fresh figs last summer, I'm eager to use them in as many recipes as I can. I combined ingredients I knew would work well together: figs with salty pork products, chicken with wine, caramelized onions with - well - everything!

There isn't much original about this dish. I have seen a dozen similar recipes on the internet and I'm sure there are hundreds more floating around. This isn't so much about creating an original recipe as it is about simply using the rules from my own head. What few ingredients can I combine for maximum deliciousness and how can I make the most of their individual properties? This is about crispy pancetta, sweet sweet caramelized onions, well-browned chicken, and wine carefully reduced to it's strongest essence.

The recipe takes a little time, but the results are well worth it.

I started by browning pancetta and then caramelizing onions. Yes, use that pancetta grease if you have it.

Next I browned pounded and dregded chicken breasts on both sides.

I made a sauce by reducing wine, figs, and a little chicken broth.

The breasts were simmered in the sauce till cooked through. I served them with squares of polenta and green beans in a balsamic reduction (Yes, there is garlic in my balsamic reduction).

I thought this dish was delicious and worth the effort. Unfortunately, the effort was wasted on Sir Pickypants, who left a pile of those expensive figs and carefully caramelized onions on the plate when he was finished. No matter how hard I try to make them sweet and delicious, he won't let go of the idea that onions=bad.

Chicken in Figs, Wine and Caramelized Onions

4 boneless, skinless chicken breast halves, pounded slightly
Four for dredging
Salt
Pepper
1-2 Tbl olive oil
3 Tbl butter
3 oz. pancetta, cut in small pieces
2 onions, thinly sliced
1 lb fresh figs, sliced
1 cup white wine
1 cup chicken broth

Dredge chicken breasts in flour, salt and pepper.

In a large pan, cook pancetta pieces until crisp. Add onions to the pan. If there is not enough grease, add 1 Tbl of olive oil. Cook at least 20 minutes at a low temperature or until they are nice and brown and sweet. Remove from pan.

Add 1 Tbl of butter and 1 Tbl oil to the pan. Brown chicken breasts well on both sides. Should be about 5 minutes per side. Remove from pan and keep warm.

Add wine, broth, and figs to the pan. Cook until reduced by about half. Adjust seasoning as necessary. You will likely want more salt here.

Put chicken and onions back into the pan and simmer until cooked through. Remove chicken breasts from pan and swirl the remaining 2 Tbl of butter into the sauce. Serve chicken breasts covered in sauce and sprinkled with the reserved pancetta bits (unless you're serving it to my husband in which case don't add the pancetta - and while you're at it, leave off the sauce).

Sweet Treat of the Week - Just Under the Wire

2009-08-15T18:18:00.012-04:00

Okay. I made my Sweet Treat this week for a Saturday night party. It's barely this week, but it still counts.

So what did the book have in store for me this time?

I made coconut blondies. I love blondies and I made a couple of different kinds last summer. I chose these because I have been obsessed with coconut lately. These are a little different from standard blondies because they have a chocolate cookie crust under them.

The cookie crust was a bit of a pain. It didn't always want to adhere to the blondie when I removed them from the pan. It did add another flavor dimension to the whole thing. This was one of the better recipes from the book.

Email me for the recipe if they look good to you.

I made a second dessert for the party as well. I decided hot August nights need ice cream. I made an ice cream that is a copy of one of my favorite ice creams at the Bellvale Creamery: Great White Way. It's white chocolate ice cream with raspberry swirl and dark chocolate chunks. I had some raspberry sauce in my freezer left over from the time my mother brought over Ina Garten's lemon cake and raspberry sauce.

There are chocolate chunks in this ice cream, I swear! They just kind of fell to the bottom.

White Chocolate Ice Cream with Raspberry Swirl and Chocolate Chunks

Ingredients
1 cup milk
2 cups heavy cream
7 egg yolks
2 tbsp sugar
8 oz. white chocolate, chopped
1 cup Ina Garten's Raspberry Sauce
4 oz dark chocolate bar, chopped

Bring milk and 1 cup of the cream to a boil. In a bowl beat the egg yolks and sugar until thick and creamy (about 2 minutes). Slowly and carefully pour the hot milk into the yolks and stir in quickly. Return the mixture to the pan. Cook until it thickens slightly (coats a spoon). DO NOT BOIL.

Remove from pan and stir in the white chocolate and the remaining cup of cream. Strain into a bowl and refrigerate until completely cold (this will take a few hours).

Freez in ice cream maker according to manufacturer's directions. When it's close to ready, blend in the chocolate chips. Remove from ice cream maker and transfer to a container. Carefully blend in the raspberry sauce, using a knife to make swirls.

Another Meal Where I Shamelessly Rip Off Other Bloggers

2009-08-11T09:28:00.011-04:00

Honestly, where did I get my recipes from before I discovered food blogs? How did I go for so long without ~~completely ruining~~ adapating other people's creations?

My most current ~~shameless copping~~ flattering imitation comes from a blog I'm prone to stealing ideas from, We Are Never Full. Their Cornish Hen Agrodolce looked really super good. They helpfully pointed out that the recipe would work for many types of meats, so I opted to make mine with good-old-fashioned chicken breasts rather than hens.

First I dredged and sauteed some chicken breasts in a little butter and olive oil. I gave them a good browning and put them aside.

(I would have taken some more photos of this process, but I was charging the camera battery.)

Then I sauteed the onions, garlic, and shallots, and added the liquid ingredients, as per Amy and Jonny's recipe. I reduced the whole thing down, strained out the onions, and then in went the jam and the rest of the solid ingredients. I added the breasts back in to cook through while the sauce reduced again.

I made another change to the recipe. I did not add olives, because I hate olives. Instead I used some choped sweet-spicy peppadew peppers, which I felt echoed the theme of the entire dish. I guess I wanted more spice after the arrabbiata that wasn't spicy enough. Once the chicken was cooked, I took it out and added the butter.

Time to serve. Oh, look what I served them over! It appears to be the cauliflower puree made with brown butter. This one was brazenly taken straight from Stephane of Zen Can Cook. I even sprinkled the asaparagus around the plate. Once again, I came a little shy of outright copying because I didn't use the peas. I hate peas.

This one was so special I trotted out the good plates and tried to arrange things nicely. I don't do food porn well, but I try.

Delicious recipes all around, so I thank you all for your inspiration!

Faking It on a Friday

2009-08-07T13:55:00.002-04:00

It was another Friday and I wanted to stick to something easy.

I took a look at what I had in the house. Bingo! I had leftover tomato sauce in the freezer from the last time I made spaghetti and meatballs. Let's have pasta.

Wait a minute! Pasta and tomato sauce? Nice, but boring. Anyone can do that. I wanted something a little more interesting.

That's when I realized that I seem to be seeing a lot of recipes lately for arrabbiata sauce on the blogs. Arrabbiata sauce seems to come in a few different forms. I have seen some with meat (and some very interesting variations on meat) and some without. Some don't even have tomatoes. The main component in arrabbiata is hot pepper.

With so many options and variations, it seemed that I could fake a decent arribiata using what I had in my kitchen and a few small purchases.

I started mine with some thinly sliced onion and a dried red pepper in the pan. Then I cooked it until the onion was soft.

Next came some links of Italian chicken sausage removed from the casings. Of course because of Sir Pickypants, it must be chicken sausage.

Here's where the recipe went south a little. I had asked for hot sausage at the meat counter. When I got the sausage home, I found out they had given me mild sausage. This kind of destroyed the point.

Then in goes the tomato sauce. We cook that through for a while and toss it with penne. In this case I used wholewheat penne rigate. I used wholewheat penne because I'm still trying to clean up my diet after my week of gluttony in Chincoteague. I'm sure Sir Pickypants agrees with me on the topic in spirt, although I'm not sure he was happy about actually having to eat it.

A little wine would be great added to this sauce too, although I had none in the house to try it myself. It would also be nice to wash this down with a nice glass of chianti. Again, my attempts to be clean for a while suggest I stay away from alcohol.

It was pretty good. We both liked it, but it tasted like tomato sauce with a little heat and some sausage thrown in. I would have liked more heat, which would have happened if I had been given the spicy sausage.

Penne Arrabbiata Al Breve Cuoco Di Disordine

Ingredients

1 Tbl olive oil
1 onion, thinly sliced
3 dried red pepper, crushed (seeds removed if you wish)
3 large links spicy Italian sausage, removed from casing and crumbled
1 quart marinara sauce (You didn't use sauce from a jar, right? RIGHT? How about I just look the other way while you pour the sauce into the pot and get the container out of my site. I'll trust you this time.)
1 pound penne rigate (or whatever pasta you wish)

Heat oil gently in a saucepan. Add onions and red pepper and cook until onions are nice and soft.

Add chicken sausage breaking up and stir to cook through.

Add the sauce and allow to simmer for a good 30 minutes or so.

Cook pasta according to package directions. Drain and serve with sauce.

Sweet Treat of the Week - Good Old Fashioned Brownies

2009-08-05T12:09:00.007-04:00

I'm back to THE BOOK.

As I've pointed out before, this book contains seemingly endless variations on one theme, whether that theme is cookies, bars, sheet cakes, tea cakes, or layer cakes. Of course that means there are quite a few brownies recipes. There are brownies with chocolate chunks, with nuts, with cream cheese. They rest of beds of cookie crusts or are topped with fudge and frosting. Almost every section of this book has multiple brownie or similar bar cookie recipe.

I decided to just check out the simplest brownie recipe in the book. It's called Supremely Fudgy Brownies. Part of my decision was simple economy. I already had all of the chocolate I would need right there in the house. It happened to be Scharffenberger chocolate, so I knew I couldn't go wrong. The other reason for my choice was pan size. Many of the brownies and bars in the book require 10" pans, which I don't have. This recipe was for a 9" one. Would these brownies be any better than any other brownie recipe I have made in the past?

The name doesn't lie. These were very fudgy. I could taste the two sticks of butter in the recipe. I didn't find them extraordinary though. They were brownies and quite good and quite rich. I've had ones that are just as good.

I did one stupid thing though. I forgot to put vanilla in them. I had the bottle right there on the counter while I was mixing everything up, but never actually opened it and poured out a spoonful. I wonder if that would have pushed the brownies into extraordinary territory. As Ina Garten always points out, chocolate on its own can be a little flat. A backup flavor can help give it more dimension.

If you're interested in seeing if you think these brownies will be the best in the world if you just remember the vanilla, please email me for the recipe.