h o m e * e c o n o m i c s

stuffed cabbage

In August of 1998, a few days before Russia defaulted on its IMF loans and the ruble collapsed, I landed in St. Petersburg for a semester of study. I was baffled by the bucking exchange rate and by the fact that three years of college Russian had not truly prepared me for interactions with real live frequently surly formerly Soviet interlocutors. In the beginning, it was a lot like having a pair of floaties in the ocean; by the end, when New Year’s (not Christmas!) decorations had gone up and the sun was hanging around for only about 6 hours a day, I had fashioned a little raft of language skills that was fairly dependable, though sometimes difficult to navigate through squalls of fast-talking, unfriendly strangers.

Luckily for me, my host mother and father were a gentle older couple with a history of taking in American girls. They spoke slowly and clearly and were very patient and kind as I strung my sentences together. In their three-room apartment (bedroom, den, kitchen), I was given the bedroom, which meant that they folded out a sofa in the den every night. I felt terribly awkward about this, but it wasn’t the first time they had turned their bedroom over to a student, and they seemed to regard it as normal.

Marina Nikolaevna, my “mother,” was meant to serve me breakfast and dinner every day. I hate hot cereal and had to struggle mightily for the right to keep eating cornflakes as the cold got more and more bitter. She insisted that I would catch my death of cold without oatmeal or breakfast kasha. I was pretty sure pneumonia didn’t work that way and held firm. But I never objected to her dinners, which always began with soup (vegetable, barley, borscht) and then featured meat with potatoes, kasha, or noodles, and some good black rye bread on the side. (I don’t recall any green vegetables, which, at the time, suited me just fine.)  Often the “meat” was delicious pelmini or stuffed cabbage.

I was at school all day and out most afternoons, and so I never saw her cooking; everything seemed to come together effortlessly. No doubt some of it (for instance, the pelmini, maybe the soup, definitely the bread) was store-bought, but it couldn’t all have been; that wouldn’t have been in the budget she was given to feed me. She was a retired geologist (as was her husband), and she just knew how to run her little house smoothly, everything in its place and always neat as a pin. All day long she would sit at the kitchen window, gossiping on the phone and watching her neighbors come and go on the street. While I ate dinner she would chat with me about my day and, with a little prodding, about her life. Her twenty-year-old granddaughter was pregnant, and it was probably high time I (21) got married and started a family, too. They didn’t understand why American girls were so slow about these things. She laughed girlishly when she remembered how she and her friends would sunbathe on the banks of the Neva as soon as it began to melt every spring, and she puffed up with pride at the memory of exams she had aced five decades earlier. As a young geologist she was sent on a state-sponsored holiday to the Crimea; at night they watched movies in outdoor theaters on the beaches of the Black Sea. She got dreamy when she explained to me how beautiful the stars were there. Now I get dreamy when I remember what it was like to wander quintuply layered and still bone-cold around St. Petersburg, looking at the pastel buildings in the odd winter light, buying rolls stuffed with cabbage from carts on the street, discovering monuments to Pushkin at every turn and visiting the Hermitage at least once a week.

Stuffed Cabbage Rolls with Sweet and Sour Tomato Sauce
adapted from The America’s Test Kitchen Family Cookbook

Chestno govoriyat (honestly speaking), this is not at all like the stuffed cabbage I ate in Russia, which was much meatier. I wasn’t really a fan of this sweet and sour sauce, but then, sweet and sour is never my favorite flavor profile; Andrew, as usual, surprised me by embracing this dish enthusiastically. It was supposed to include crushed gingersnaps, too, but that sounded like a disaster to me and I wasn’t willing to risk dinner on it. This recipe, then, is significantly adapted to what I was willing to do and what I had in the cupboard. Making the cabbage balls is fun, and hey, they look like little brains. Maybe this is good for a kids' Halloween party!

-Bring 4 quarts water and 1 tbs salt to a boil. Core a 1 pound green cabbage (I used Savoy) and pull off about 18 of the outer leaves, being careful to leave them intact. When the water boils, cook the separated leaves for about 3 minutes, until they begin to wilt. Remove them to a colander (with tongs—do not discard the water), then add the remaining cored cabbage to the pot. Cook for 3 minutes and remove to the colander Add ¼ cup white rice to the boiling water and cook until tender, about 13 minutes. Drain, rinse with cold water, and leave in a colander to drain thoroughly.
-Combine the cooked rice, ½ onion grated on the large holes of a box grater, ¾ pound mild turkey sausage [original recipe calls for ground beef], ¼ teaspoon salt, and ¼ teaspoon pepper.
-Take the individual cabbage leaves and slice out any tough stems (just at the bottom, without slicing the leaves in half completely). Lay 2 tablespoons meat stuffing on each leaf just above the “v” where you cut out the stem. Fold the two sides over the stuffing and then roll each leaf up into a tight little bundle.
-Shred the boiled cabbage heart and spread half of it in the bottom of a large Dutch oven (I used a  5.5 quart round). Lay the cabbage rolls atop the bed of cabbage, seam side down. Spread the rest of the shredded cabbage over them.
-Combine an 8-ounce can diced tomatoes (including juices), a 14.5-ounce can tomato puree, 1 cup water, 1.5 tbs brown sugar, 1.5 tbs. lemon juice, and ¼ tsp salt in a bowl. Pour it over the cabbage. Peel an onion and stick it with 6 cloves; submerge it in the pot. Bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer, cover, and cook gently for 30 minutes.
-Then discard the onion. Add ¼ cup raisins, if you like (Andrew did not like the raisins; I did). Simmer, uncovered, about 1 hour more, until the sauce begins to thicken.

for better or for worse

Like, I suspect, most stovebound homebodies, I strongly prefer to stay home on Big Nights. I greeted 2005 warmly with steak and champagne at Andrew’s house. This New Year’s Eve we planned a feast for mine: gougeres, tomatoes stuffed with bitter greens, potato-crusted salmon, chocolate cakes, and caramels. We had been out to dinner the night before at Blue Hill, where, before the crab salad and lamb with chickpeas and roasted pears, he had, as it happens, asked me to marry him. So we were aglow with affection and good fortune as we began preparing the last dinner of the year, trusting Jean-Georges and Mark Bittman to get us through to morning.

I made the gougeres already described and a dish of caramels so sublime they deserve their own post. Andrew spent a long time chopping vegetables for the stuffed tomatoes.

When he declared his weariness, I smoothed his hair and said I loved him and told him to devote himself to the 24 marathon on TV. I grated potatoes to coat the fish as Andrew boned the salmon without removing his eyes from Kiefer Sutherland’s plight. Feeling unwell, he left cooking the fish to me.

Meantime, the oil around the baking tomatoes had begun filling my apartment with acrid smoke, and the dish had to be removed from the oven halfway through the prescribed cooking time. I tried to cook the first batch of fish in a pan too flimsy and too hot. My frustration mounting as I inhaled the insalubrious fumes from oily tomato-baking and fish-burning, I had, I’m afraid, a bit of a fit. Andrew smoothed my hair and told me we were getting married and said dinner would be wonderful no matter what. I had to take a deep breath and agree. I finished up the fish, which worked fine once I switched to a cast-iron skillet: fish coated with hash browns, right at your own kitchen table! Brilliant. Just pat shredded potatoes onto a half-inch-thick filet and fry in a generous amount of fat.

After making a completely forgettable sauce, I plated the food

(still not my forte) and tore Andrew from the sofa, where he had been growing quieter and quieter and less involved. Flinching a bit at the sight of his plate, he bravely took a bite of salmon. “Mmm,” he said unconvincingly, “This is good. It has a nice texture.” Mine was overcooked and far too firm, and I said so. “I think I’m going to throw up,” Andrew said. I thought that was a bit drastic, but before I could answer, he was off to the bathroom, where he stayed for the next 8 hours. Some awful bug had chosen to ring in the new year in his stomach, poor thing. Either that, or his body was violently rejecting the idea of marriage, you know, one or the other.

I plowed through as much of the ridiculous mountain of leftovers as I could over the next few days, eating surreptitiously because Andrew couldn’t manage anything but ginger ale, Gatorade, saltines, and chicken broth (and barely even that). I think it will be a while before we take on another marathon cooking challenge.

IMBB 19: i can't believe i ate vegan!

This will sound completely improbable, but I actually tricked myself into eating vegan.  Last Sunday I was standing at the stove, doing some idle stirring and gently scolding myself for not having gotten it together for the latest round of IMBB, which I had read about but not put into my calendar. I looked at the steaming pots before me and realized that I just happened to be cooking a vegan Sunday night dinner: two Madhur Jaffrey recipes, naturally, Anatolian Red Lentil Stew with Wheat Berries and Chickpeas, and New Potatoes Cooked in Their Jackets. (Lest you think this is normal in my house, I assure you, it is not--my table is frequently meatless, but seldom cheeseless eggless creamless, and almost never butterless). Next I assumed I was too late to send my felicitous feast over to Becks & Posh, but for once, I happened to be ahead of the game.

In the last photo, I'm afraid you can see some yogurt, which was an optional garnish for the stew. The stew was, however, just as good without a spoonful of dairy--rich and satisfying. I have never been a big fan of eggplant, but this summer, one of Andrew's friends made a moussaka that has had me rethinking that position. This is definitely the kind of dish that makes you say, yes, I could do without meat for a good long while. The potatoes were spicy and satisfying--though I'm not sure my cooking technique was exactly what it ought to have been, since they were a bit mealy. For dessert we shared an orange...and a few hours later, I made a decidedly un-vegan pound cake, but that's another story.

First I made vegetable stock for the stew.

We had bought all these gorgeous vegetables at the Greenmarket--prettiest carrots you've ever seen--and Andrew was sorry to see them sacrificed to stock. But it was a rich, delicious, even, I thought, buttery vegetable broth, so they did not go in vain. For once, I think it made a significant difference in the final dish.

Cut into one-inch chunks 1 large onion, 2 large carrots, 2 celery ribs (with some leaves), and one fat leek. Peel and smash 8 garlic cloves, and wash 8 branches of parsley (I added a small handful of carrot greens as well, since I had them). Heat 1 tablespoon olive oil in your soup pot. When it is hot, put everything in, along with 2 bay leaves and a sprinkle of dried thyme. Brown the vegetables for 10 minutes, then cover them with 6 cups of water and add 2 tsp salt. Bring to boil; simmer, uncovered, for 30 minutes; and strain.

Then I started the stew. Alas, the first instruction was to soak 1/4 cup of wheatberries for 12 hours, and a key ingredient was dried mint, which I couldn't find at the store. So I substituted "as much time as was available" for "12 hours," and herbes de provence for the mint--going on the iffy reasoning that eggplants and chickpeas are Mediterranean ingredients that would take as well to one Mediterranean seasoning as another. Actually, I was so happy with the substantial fennel-y taste of what I made that I would worry now about trying it with mint instead.

-Soak 1/4 cup wheatberries in 4 cups of water for 12 (ahem!) hours.
-Drain wheatberries. Put in a pot with 2 1/4 cups water and bring to a boil. Cover, turn heat to very low, and cook for 1.5 hours, at which point most of the water should be absorbed (this did not happen for me, perhaps due to my drastically curtailed soaking time; but they were chewy and delicious, so we just drained and added them as if all was well).
-Heat 1/4 cup oil in a large, heavy pot over medium high heat. When it is hot, add 1 finely chopped, smallish-medium onion and fry for 4 minutes, stirring frequently. Add 1 or 2 cups of 1/4-inch diced, peeled eggplant (Madhur Jaffrey says 1 cup; this looked like absurdly not enough to us, so we did 2 heaping cups) and fry for 2 minutes.
-Turn the heat to medium low. Add 2.5 tbs tomato paste, stir and cook for 30 seconds. Add 1 cup of red lentils, stir and cook for 30 seconds.
-Add 4 cups of your vegetable stock (or water) and 2 tbs dried mint (or if you are me, a scant tbs of herbes de provence). Bring to a boil, then cover partially, lower heat, and simmer for 40 minutes, or until the lentils are tender.
-Once it has cooked, MJ says to blend it until smooth in a blender or food processor. Even with the immersion blender, though, this seemed to me like a silly dirtying of kitchenware, since the stew was already fairly un-chunky. So we just moved on to the next stage, which was...
-Stir in another cup of stock, if you want. Stir in wheatberries; stir in a drained can of chickpeas; simmer everything together for 15 minutes. Add lemon juice and salt to taste. Garnish with parsley.

While the stew was at the lentil-simmering stage, there was just enough time to get the potatoes together.

 

This is one of those recipes the recipe-writer introduces with a lyrical description of how perfect it is with the original ingredients, which you, unfortunately, will not be able to find in the United States. In this case, MJ treats us to her memories of itty-bitty potatoes in India, then sniffs that perhaps in a pinch this could be made with diced new potatoes. Luckily, we had bought some very special baby Yukon gold and baby purple potatoes at the Greenmarket.

-Wash and dice (but do not peel) enough potatoes to cover the bottom of your skillet. Soak them in cold water.
-Blend a roughly chopped 1.5 sq inch piece of ginger with 1/2 tsp turmeric and 3 tbs water to form a paste. (I just grated the ginger and stirred in the other ingredients, which worked, but not quite as well).
-Heat 4 tbs vegetable oil in a 12 inch skillet over medium heat. Toast 1/4 tsp whole cumin seeds until they take color, about 30 seconds. Add paste and cook for 1 minute.
-Drain potatoes and add them. THEY WILL SPIT. I should have been more careful about this Stir and fry for 5 minutes.
-Add one cup of chopped coriander. Lower heat and fry 5 more minutes, stirring and scraping bottom of pan frequently.
-Add 1 tsp salt, 1/4 tsp cayenne, 2 tbs lemon juice, and 3 tbs warm water. (You are also supposed to add 1 tsp garam masala and 1 tbs ground coriander, neither of which I had). Stir, scrape bottom, and cover. Turn heat to very low and cook for 25 minutes or until done (Mine were done in 15 minutes...perhaps I cut them too small).

Mmm, brown vegan food. It may not be the prettiest thing you've ever seen, but the spicy potatoes (just spicy enough to make my face glow) went well with the soothing stew.

nothing to see here, ma'am...no yogurt...move along.

Tagged with: IMBB # 19 + Vegan

i heart ina: chicken with croutons and coeur a la creme with strawberry sauce

The reason I just had to go home to see my family is that my parents finally moved into the house they have been building for about a year now. It was an exciting process, but also very stressful--my mother has an incredible eye for detail, which means that she has excellent taste (though she would never praise herself like this, it is true)...and that builders' mistakes do not slip by her. Consequently, they were daily battling these guys about things not done the right way (or not done at all; it did not always require an eye for detail to see what was going wrong). I am pleased to report that the result is really beautiful. Too, I am pleased to report that Becca and I convinced them to break in their kitchen while I was home.

Some people are not fans of Ina Garten, I suppose, but we are not those people. We fondly recall buying the first Barefoot Contessa cookbook because the picture on the front was so appealing. As I remember it (though I suspect I am conflating two memories), we went straight home and made that Nicoise salad on the jacket, which made us believers. My mom appreciates how straightforward and trusty her recipes are. So it was only natural that we would turn to Barefoot in Paris for our first new-house meal; we decided on Lemon Chicken with Croutons and a coeur a la creme.

You will think I am exaggerating, but this meal was rapturously yummy. The bed of onions on which the chicken roasts becomes almost a thick onion gravy, and since you pile everything on top of the croutons, it is a meal in which using bread to sop up juices is built right in. I urge you to try it! And lest you also think we break out the champers every time we cook: this lovely bottle of champagne was a housewarming gift from the builders. Given their fraught relationship with my parents, we worried that it might be poisoned, but so far, we're all still kicking.

the doctor at work

LEMON CHICKEN WITH CROUTONS

As so often happens with Ina Garten, this recipe is mysteriously perfect. I kept checking on the browning chicken, worried that the top would burn by the time the whole cooked. Instead, it cooked in exactly the amount of time she said it would. I don't remember that the meat itself was the juiciest, best I'd ever tasted, probably because the onions and croutons were so good that it was hard to notice anything else.

-Preheat oven to 425.
-Slice 1 large yellow onion; I did thick slices. Put it in the roasting pan and toss with a little olive oil.
-Take your four pound chicken; remove giblets, wash bird, dry thorougly.
-Place chicken on top of onions in roasting pan. Salt and pepper cavity and stuff with 2 quartered lemons. Brush outside of bird with 2 tbs. melted unsalted butter; sprinkle with more salt and pepper.
-She says to truss, but we did not. Roast for 1 hour and 15 minutes
-While the bird is roasting, prepare your croutons.

If you are at all like us, you will pull out a ruler to cut a small country boule into 3/4 inch cubes, thereby making six cups of bread cubes. My mom apologized for handing me the ruler when I began this task, but the truth is, I would have used a ruler even if she wasn't there.
-When your chicken gets out of the oven, let it rest while you make the croutons. Heat 2 tbs. olive oil in a large saute pan until very hot. Lower heat to medium-low and saute the croutons until they are browned--about ten minutes--adding more oil as needed. Sprinkle with 1/2 tsp. salt and 1/4 tsp. pepper.
-Put the croutons on a platter and top with sliced chicken, onions, and pan juices. Try to save room for dessert.

COEUR A LA CREME WITH STRAWBERRY SAUCE

This is a dessert my mother has wanted to make since she clipped a magazine recipe for it as a girl. She bought the mold years ago, but we didn't make it until just now. I have always been curious about it, too, since I of course cannot resist anything that requires special equipment; special equipment shaped like a heart--forget about it! I did not suspect that it would be so heavenly--it is like a crustless cheesecake, thick and sweet and beautifully vanilla-y. I want to pile it on gingersnaps to make mini-cheesecakes. Ina made raspberry sauce, but we made strawberry. You have to make it the day before you're going to eat it, because it sits in the refrigerator overnight; theoretically, it is draining, but ours released barely any liquid at all.

-Using the paddle attachment of your stand mixer, beat 12 oz. room temperature cream cheese with 1 1/4 cups powdered sugar for 2 minutes at high speed.
-Scrape down bowl and change to whisk attachment. On low spead, add 2 1/2 cups cold heavy cream, 2 tsp. vanilla, 1/4 tsp. grated lemon zest, and the seeds of 1 vanilla bean. Then beat on high spped "until the mixture is very thick, like whipped cream." Now, I don't think of whipped cream as "very thick." Ours definitely got thicker than whipped cream--peaks held themselves indefinitely--which may have been too thick, but the result was amazing.
-Line your heart-shaped mold (or a 7-inch sieve) with cheesecloth and pour in the mixture. Put it over something to drain (as you can see, ours came with a heart-shaped draining dish--fancy).
-Refrigerate overnight, unmold, and serve with...

STRAWBERRY SAUCE
-Put 1/2 pint of strawberries, sliced, into a small saucepan with 1/2 cup sugar and 1/4 cup water. Bring to a boil, then lower heat to simmer for four minutes.
-Pour the cooked fruit into a food processor or blender with 1 cup strawberry jam and mix until smooth.
-This makes more than you will need for your coeur. It is also quite sweet, which did not bother me one bit.

so I'm not a food stylist! trust me, it tastes great

steak & cake

I have always been a red meat girl, even in high school, when everyone else seemed to be subsisting on frozen yogurt and Lender's bagels. I haven't often made myself a steak at home, however, preferring to leave that to the people who know how and thereby to avoid the whole dodgy, expensive meat-buying experience. Last weekend I finally bought steak at the Greenmarket, having lurked tentatively around the Elk Trails Bison Ranch stand for a few Saturdays. I wish I had done it sooner.

Elk Trails sells both bison and black angus beef. The beef is grass-fed--I hate to get all Greenmarket-sanctimonious, but it is comforting to think that when dinner mooed it was not eating, you know, reconstituted cow pellets. Being shy sorts, Andrew and I sidled up to the counter and quietly waited to be noticed before telling the nice lady that we wanted a pound of hanger steak. There wasn't quite enough, though, so the big bison boss butted in and recommended that we take a Western Sizzler. Thankful for the guidance (and, at least in my case, looking forward to eating something called "Western Sizzler"), we took it and nodded gravely as he urged us not to subject it to high heat. Grass-fed beef is less fatty than grain-fed, so high heat will dry it out faster than we suppose.

Since my cooktop still isn't working, we had to broil it. I thought it was a little tough--not disastrously so--but the taste was fantastic. A few weeks ago, we broiled some supermarket steaks; those seemed passable at the time, but they had nothing on this meat, which was much bigger tasting, no tougher, and, at $10 a pound, not much more expensive. I will definitely be back there and am already dreaming of a winter full of bison stews and steak dinners. With Greenmarket corn and tomatoes, drizzled with creme fraiche mixed with cumin and chili powder, sprinkled with chives, it was a Sunday night dinner that felt special despite being fast, easy, and cheap to put together.

In fact, it felt so special that I was inspired to make chocolate cupcakes for dessert.
 
But those might deserve their own post.

tomato tart with parmesan crust

   

I deplaned at Newark with two packages of dried porcini mushrooms in my carry-on. I feared I would be detained by mushroom-sniffing dogs, but, thank goodness, I made it through. (Mushrooms are probably allowed and I'm just being crazy; but I thought they looked suspicious.) Andrew, who was on a different flight, was in charge of bringing back a giant hunk of Parmigiano-Reggiano; he, too, was nervous, but he made it. Whew.

When I got home I collapsed onto the sofa, opened my computer (o, computer, how I missed you!), and found  that Heidi had posted the perfect recipe for using that cheese on 101 Cookbooks: an heirloom tomato tart in a parmesan crust. The next weekend I bought these beautiful tomatoes (the picture doesn't do them justice at all, as you know if you have ever seen a tomato). The tart was great fun to make. I love making things in my tart pan--it makes me feel very professional, the fluted edge. Once the shell has baked and cooled, you just arrange your tomato slices on top.

It  tasted as good as you would expect, despite the fact that I mistakenly added a teaspoon of salt to the tart crust. I would love to make small versions of these and pile them with salad, too, as a first course (god forbid we eat an out-of-season tomato, after all; the food police would be at our door in two shakes of a lamb's tail).

an eating vacation

IN WHICH she travels to Italy, eats a lot of cheese, reads Marcella Hazan, fries flowers, and makes decadent pork cutlets

the famous cheese sign; please forgive my lame faux-constructivism

Earlier this month I was fortunate enough to spend two weeks in Italy with Andrew and his family. To celebrate their thirtieth wedding anniversary, his parents rented a house in Emiglia-Romagna and invited their friends and family to visit them there. No one I've spoken to has known where Emiglia-Romagna is, which is probably why we saw no English-speakers while we were there. It's the pink region that spans the beginning of the skinny part of the boot--below Lombardy (the blue region) and above Tuscany (the orange region).

It is also where the Parmigiano-Reggiano is made. In fact, when we first drove from the airport to the village nearest the house, his parents told us to meet them under that giant P-R sign you can see in the first picture. What an omen!

The house was spacious and comfortable, with a cozy, low-ceilinged kitchen that reminded me of a hobbit hole. Almost every night we ate dinner on a porch overlooking the little valley:

We bought cheese and cured meats from the store beneath the cheese sign, but we bought produce and most other things from a grocery store. The grocery store had multiple cartons of quail eggs, which we had to try. Here they are hard-boiled, adorning a salad of watercress, fennel, and pink grapefruit (with tomatoes only around the edge).

I also invented a bruschetta topped by mascarpone, lardo, and a fried quail egg. It was not very good, but it was politely eaten.

At the cheese store, we picked up a tiny promotional booklet of recipes involving parmigiano-reggiano. Though the instructions were less than clear, we decided to make these little pork cutlets: they are wrapped in prosciutto, dipped in egg, rolled in grated cheese, and baked. They don't LOOK extremely appetizing, and I wouldn't call them midsummer food, but they were, as you might imagine, succulent and tasty.

I do not have the original recipe, but it wasn't much help anyway. We could not read the cuts of meat at the grocery store, so we bought what looked like a tenderloin--about 10 inches long--and cut it into 1/2 or 3/4 inch slices. We wrapped each slice with a very thinly sliced piece of prosciutto, dipped the whole thing into one beaten egg, and coated it in Parmigiano-Reggiano (you will need about a cup and a half grated). The finished slices went into a buttered baking dish; the baking dish went into a 400 degree oven for 15 minutes. The original recipe said not to cook them for longer than 10 minutes, but this didn't seem as if it could be right, since the slices of pork were not so thin. In any event, if you try this, I would advise you to rely on your own experience with pork OR to check frequently.

When we did find the twice-a-week market (which emphasized cheap shoes and dishtowels, not food), the first stall we saw was...meat and cheese! But we did find some vegetables eventually.

      

These zucchini blossoms did not come from the market, though--they were right at the grocery store. Marcella Hazan (whose wonderful Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking I had never looked into before--now I will all the time) had a recipe for fried zucchini blossoms that we had to try. If it sounds odd to you, don't be put off. They were delicious, interesting to look at, and easy (of course, Andrew handled the boiling oil, not I).

I do not have the cookbook with me, but you could use any tempura-style batter. I believe Marcella's was 1/4 cup flour vigorously beaten into 1 cup of water. This was supposed to gain a sour-cream like consistence, which mine never did, so I added some extra flour...and it came out fine. After each flower was dipped in batter, Andrew laid it into 1/2 inch of hot vegetable oil, browned each side (perhaps 1 minute and a half total?), and  put it on paper towels to drain a bit.  You sprinkle them with a bit of salt and eat them while they are hot. It's kind of like the popcorn of the gods.

   

We made many other wonderful things that I unfortunately do not have pictures of. Here, Andrew and his father make deliciously cheesy gnocchi that is baked instead of boiled. That is not a specialized gnocchi cutter you see in Andrew's hand; he is improvising with a decanter.

This is the plate of a very sad girl who wishes there were more gnocchi on it!

madhur jaffrey's broiled chicken strips

 

After hearing Andrew Tropicana, I mean Andrew Glass, praise Madhur Jaffrey to the skies for the millionth time, I realized that she was published by the house I work for, and I picked up An Invitation to Indian Cooking. Needless to say, it took me many months to cook from it, but this weekend was the weekend. My excuse was that I wouldn't try to make a spice paste without a Cuisinart; now that I am nicely nested, Cusinart and all, I gave it a go. After all, there's only so much buttery, Frenchy food I can cram down a boy's throat.

I have never had a Cuisinart before. For me it is associated with my mom and pie dough, altogether too adult an implement for me to own--an impression only reinforced by the terrifying warnings the Cuisinart people slip into their packaging, apparently (correctly) imagining that I will slice off my fingers the first chance I get. It was Nigel Slater's lovely descriptions of green curry in Appetite that convinced me I had to have a food processor, and so here I am, hauling it down from a high shelf to make chicken bits.

The seductiveness of Madhur Jaffrey's writing surprised me. One forgets that cookbooks were, at one time, written, not just churned out with headnotes about how "awesome" the recipe is or relating some authorial anecdote that feels false. I chose this recipe because Jaffrey promises that "its taste is heavenly, lightly but definitely spiced" and "it tastes as good cold as it does hot." How could I resist?

Though it was not what I would refer to as "lightly spiced," it was very yummy. I am always surprised and delighted that it is so easy to make something "exotically" (sorry) fragrant at home; the first time I cooked with fresh ginger--six years ago--I thought I was an absolute genius. Anyway, I cut her recipe in half, down to the proportions I've listed below. Some notes: she says to cut the chicken into 1.5 or 2 inch pieces, 1/2 inch wide; I did this and found that it cooked much too quickly (I removed it after 12 minutes, not 20, and it was dryish). Perhaps my broiler differs substantially from hers, but I will do stir-fry size chunks next time. Though I cut the recipe in half, I forgot to cut the oil and vinegar in half. It was still delicious, but I suspect the effect is different (i.e., even better) with the correct proportions. She says ground coriander, by which I imagined she meant dried coriander; now I'm not so sure. In any case, dried coriander--boy, is that musty or what? Because I had no tomato sauce, I used a dab of tomato paste. And I used a whole teaspoon of cayenne--it didn't seem like much, but the finished dish was so spicy I wished I had used only a heaping quarter teaspoon.

1.5 lbs boneless, skinless chicken breast
2.5 tbs vegetable oil
2 tbs red wine vinegar
1 small onion, peeled and chopped
1/2 head of garlic, cloves peeled and chopped
a small piece of ginger, peeled and chopped
1 tbs whole fennel seeds
1 tbs ground cumin
1tsp ground coriander
seeds from 4 cardamom pods
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
4 whole cloves
10 black peppercorns
1/2 tsp cayenne (for a slightly heated dish)
1 tsp salt
1.5 tbs tomato sauce

Pulse everything but the chicken in a food processor until it forms a smooth paste. Cut the chicken into bite size pieces and marinate in the paste in a plastic bag for four or five hours. Preheat your broiler. When the oven is heated, line a baking sheet with tin foil, spread the chicken over it, and cook for 10 minutes. Flip and cook for 10 more minutes or until the chicken is lightly browned. Serve with rice (or, if your cooktop isn't working and you don't know how to make rice in the oven, on a kaiser roll. Ahem).

chinese orange-flavored chicken

Deep frying at home is in my mind forever associated with lingering odors and spitting oil setting things on fire: a messy, dangerous proposition. I was therefore understandably reluctant to try the orange-flavored chicken from the May/June Cook's Illustrated. When my yearning for the new issue sent me back to the old one (first stop: chunky oatmeal cookies, not so exciting), I enlisted the Y to handle the boiling oil. Look how brave he is: short sleeves! The blue sunglasses are for protection, or maybe just to look awesome.

This turned out to be yet another Cook's Illustrated recipe whose complicatedness, thankfully, is more than matched by its deliciousness. I suppose it wasn't that complicated (chop stuff, make marinade, bread and fry chicken, reduce sauce), but it was time consuming. Having never deep fried anything myself, I was enthralled by the texture and taste we achieved--at home!: the chicken was dipped in egg white and then cornstarch, which left a perfectly crispy shell. We didn't even have an oil thermometer to make sure the oil was the Cook's mandated temperature, but it worked out perfectly. The Y and I resolved to attempt a sesame chicken variation once we had saved up enough energy to do it all again.

I was extraordinarily amused by the time and effort it took for us to produce a meal (however delicious) that looked exactly like...

...what everybody else in New York ordered for dinner that night and had delivered to his door in twenty minutes flat. The only delivery Chinese I've ever had that was even close to this good was the old sesame chicken from Y.Y. Doodle's, on a good night. Our sauce may look the same, but it was so aromatic and, um, saucy.

tuna with tapenade

THIS IS the tuna with tapenade that was Sunday night dinner about a month ago (!). A funny thing about this camera...the colors aren't true at all, but at least in this case, that seems to have improved matters rather than made them worse.

I can't remember whether this was from Fast Food My Way or Encore With Claudine, but it is the best Jacques Pepin recipe I have tried yet. You simply mince olives (Nicoise and oil-cured) and press them onto one side of the fish before cooking it on top of the stove. (We should have added anchovies to the tapenade, too, but I did not want to buy them). You finish the fish in the oven, but this left it rather dry--if I use such a thin piece again (just under an inch), I might skip the oven. I would not skip the bed of arugula, though. I'm usually not sold on that kind of thing, but in this case, the cool, peppery bed made the meaty tuna and olives all the tastier.

By the way, you will perhaps be amused to know that part of my original intent here was to show my grocery bill for each dish. This would help me comparison shop, and I think it's interesting. So far I have a big pile of receipts but have not broken anything out. I can tell you off the top of my head that fish is almost always so expensive as to be a very special dinner. Last week wild ("wild"?) salmon cost only $10/lb at Whole Foods, and I had to buy it; though on second thought, that's pretty expensive for Tuesday night dinner. In the new house maybe I'll start managing my receipts. Onward!