What to Cook for Dinner: Nicole’s Favorites January 4, 2009

My friend Alix and I were just chatting over IM about our favorite recipes, so I thought it might make a fun list. The faves are things that I’ve been cooking recently.

BTW, it affirms my assertion that the October issues of Martha Stewart Living have always been the best. Best recipes, best crafts, best covers (until Michael Boodro became editor and, really, just ruined the magazine for me).

My winter faves (all Martha):

• Apricot-Dijon Glazed Chicken (MSL, 10/04)
• Spicy Squash Pasta (MSL, 10/05)
• Pumpkin pancakes (MSL, 10/06)
• Chocolate pots de creme (MSL, 2/97)

My recent faves (my kitchen has been almost all Bittman, all the time):

• Roast Chicken with Roasted New Potatoes (How to Cook Everything, p. 359)
• Spicy Tofu with Ground Pork (HTCE, p. 526)
• Baked Ziti with Radicchio and Gorgonzola (HTCE, p. 143)
• Broccoli Raab with Sausage and Grapes (HTCE, p. 545)

On my to-cook list:

• Gwynnie’s Caramelized Black-Pepper Chicken (GOOP)
• Also, her Buckwheat Banana Pancakes (GOOP)
• Our friend V’s veggie saute: red onion, mushrooms (any kind but flavorful is better), basil, zuch, red peppers, tomato. Drizzle with balsamic, let it sit together and stew. Serve over a mild white fish or polenta.
• Smitten Kitchen’s Chocolate-Toffee Cookies
• Moosewood Cookbook’s Lemon-Anise Biscotti (this and the guacamole recipe are the only two things I make out of this cookbook anymore).
• Bittman’s chicken stock (still choosing which one)

[[Update 1/12/09]]

How could I forget my favorite chili recipe? Sooooo good.

Grilling for One August 28, 2008

The coals are off to a promising start.

Grilling for one is not nearly as enjoyable as grilling for more than one. But even though everyone I called had plans, was sick, or didn’t call me back, it was just too beautiful of an afternoon to not grill. In San Francisco, these kinds of days come infrequently and without warning, so I have to jump on these opportunities when they arise.

My menu was largely determined by the items in my fridge that I didn’t want going bad when I’m out of town later this week and the amount of prep work I felt like doing (as little as I could get away with). The main goal of the whole dinner was to feed myself while practicing mandolin outside.

Ingredients are ready to go!

Le menu:

• Grilled romaine salad made with week-old hearts of romaine that’s still in good shape
• Grilled potato wedges
• Grilled lamb loin chops (on sale at the supermarket)

Since I didn’t have time to marinate the lamb, I drizzled some lemon juice and sprinkled it with once-fresh (now dried) rosemary. I started the coals in the chimney, filling it halfway since I was only cooking for myself, and started practicing.

Experienced grillers will find the critical error in that statement: you need a critical mass of coals in order to

Blueberry-brie appetizers.

get enough heat to grill the meat through. After adding coals, restacking them, and still seeing the lamb (and romaine, and potatoes) merely get warm, I gave up. About 45 minutes after I first put everything on the grill. I retreated to my kitchen, fired up the grill pan (apparently almost literally, as my apartment filled rather quickly with smoke), and finished cooking everything inside.

Giving up on the grill.

This post was originally written on August 10, but I forgot to publish it. Oops.

Escarole soup like Mom used to make January 14, 2008

My mom is awesome in many ways, but she is not a memorable cook. Between working full-time, doing all the chores around the house (I still can’t believe sometimes that she didn’t assign us any and that we didn’t offer when we saw her work so hard), and being the go-to parent, she didn’t exactly have a lot of time. There are a few things that she made, though, that I loved: sloppy chicken (it was actually called Sunshine Chicken, but we renamed it after the sticky layer of marmalade that coated our hands after we ate it), chipped beef on toast, BLTs, and escarole soup.

I used to try to make her escarole soup, but the only virtue of my version was the limited number of ingredients: cheese tortellini, chicken stock, and escarole. It never had any flavor. Tonight, I decided to try it again, only with chard instead of escarole (admittedly, because I couldn’t remember what escarole looked like and was too embarrassed to ask at Lucky) and a quick consultation with a Giada De Laurentiis recipe for something similar.

It was so yummy and light yet filling and took about 20 minutes, start to finish. Go Mom.

Ingredients:

• 1 32-oz. container of all-natural chicken broth that I bought to make the soup
• 1 14-oz. can of low-sodium chicken broth that I found in our cupboard when I realized 32 oz. was not enough
• 2 cups water to make up the difference and to thin out the broth
• pepper, to taste
• a generous pinch of parsley flakes
• 1 20-oz. package of cheese tortellini
• About 3/4 of a bunch of chard, washed well, ribs removed, and chopped into long strips (note: chard doesn’t shrink nearly as much as other greens, such as spinach or arugula, when they wilt, so pick a larger pot than you think you’ll need)
• Pecorino Romano, shaved into thin slices for garnish

1. Pour the various liquids into a large soup pot and bring to a simmer. Add pepper and parsley to taste.
2. Add the pasta and let it cook for about 5 mins.
3. Add the chard and let it wilt while the pasta finishes cooking, about 2-3 more minutes.
4. Serve into bowls, shave a few slices of pecorino on top, add a dash of pepper, eat with yummy Italian bread like my favorite, Grace Baking’s Pugliese. Mangia.

So why was mine so terrible before? I used veggie stock (sorry vegetarians, it tastes weird here) and forgot to add pepper.

Pumpkin-Chocolate Tart December 5, 2007

(Am home sick today, so I’m using the time to catch up on some blogging.)

I always intend to blog about various cooking projects (but of course, the road to hell is paved with good intentions), but never seem to find the time. So here’s a quick update on the ridiculously decadent pumpkin-chocolate tart (from MSL 11/2003) I made for the vegetarian Thanksgiving down in Santa Cruz.

Next time, I’m going to build the sides up a bit more. They shrunk more than I remembered. And yes, that is chopped chocolate in the bottom of the chocolate crust. You can see one of my test pots de creme for post-Thanksgiving (before they met their unfortunate fate) in the background.

The creme fraiche in the filling gives it a nice tang that helps, slightly, to cut the richness of the chocolate. The store-bought creme fraiche helped speed up the preparation. I’ve made this twice before and made my own creme fraiche both times.

Sadly, my photos of the finished tart either make the chocolate look strangely purple or are out of focus. Next time, I’m going to heat the chocolate a bit more to get it a thinner consistency for dripping. The globby look of the chocolate undermines the presentation and doesn’t make it look as yummy as it is, although it does remind me of lattice-crust pie.

Cut in small pieces. This is one of the richest desserts I’ve ever made.

Good Food Day October 4, 2007

Breakfast:

• Martha Bros. coffee
• Katz pumpernickel bagel with cream cheese

Lunch:

• Carnitas tacos and tamarindo Jarritos at Mijita
• Chocolate cupcake with coffee buttercream icing at Miette

Dinner:

• Persimmon salad (with chocolate persimmons)
• Beet salad with marscapone
• Pomegranate poussin
• Chocolate-hazelnut tortine
• All shared, at Incanto

A vodka tasting where you don’t taste the vodka October 4, 2007

Tiffany invited me to a vodka tasting on Monday night at Frisson*, on Jackson St. The venue was really cool — very 70s minimalist with an amazing back-lit domed ceiling.

After introducing ourselves to the PR folks, we were given the drink menu: an Indian Summer, with huckleberries and I can’t remember what else, and a more citrusy vodka drink whose name escapes me.

A vodka tasting? With mixed drinks?

I’m not going to say what brand of vodka it was, because I don’t want to disparage something I only tasted as a complement to the amazing huckleberry juice. But if one is launching a new vodka, especially a vitamin-infused vodka, where food critics might be, shall we say, a bit suspicious of the taste, wouldn’t you want to prove that it’s something that works well in a mixed drink and on its own? I feel confident I would have been able to taste it solo had I asked for it, but I find it strange that it wasn’t offered.

Further reading: Levitt, Stephen D. “Is Vodka Different,” Freaknomics blog, NYTimes.com. Aug. 31, 2007.

My take? Because vodka drinkers prefer an alcohol that, compared to other liquors like gin or whiskey, is tasteless, those people are more swayed by trends than by flavor. Therefore, new “it” vodkas can catch on, become hugely popular, then fade out when the next “it” vodka takes hold. Vitamin-infused vodka will, I’m sure, be huge in the Marina.

* The website automatically plays music. Surfer beware.

The California Taco, the Mission Burrito, and Please, Easy on the Rice August 24, 2007

Burrito in el Toro
Originally uploaded by GavinBell

Jason Horn’s bio on his Chow.com stories is one place that mentions it, but nearly everyone who leaves the Bay Area or California laments the lack of Mission-style burritos. Oddly enough, the first time I heard about Mission-style burritos was when I lived in Portland and the nearest place to eat a cheap lunch indoors (a key thing to know when you live in a rainy city) was Taco del Mar.

I thought one of the funny things about this post on Emdashes was that tacos were cited as a reason to visit California back in the 1970s. Is that our culinary heritage?

So what is a Mission-style burrito? I think, for most of the world, it’s a non-Taco Bell burrito wrapped in tin foil. This Chowhound thread seems to say that the difference is rice, which my friend Prentice would take issue with. She points out — rightly, I think — that the rice is just really filler. Yes, it does absorb the liquid of the salsa, tomatoes, etc., but the quantity of rice in most burritos leaves me feeling that, even for a $5 burrito, I’m paying for more than I’m getting.

Of course, Wikipedia weighs in on the subject. My favorite section is the culture and politics. Only in San Francisco would a burrito become politicized.

Making dough in a mini-Cuisinart August 12, 2007

It’s not the worst thing in the world to try to make dough in a mini Cuisinart, but it is labor-intensive. I just spent an hour making pate brisee in a ridiculous number of batches. But it actually turned out better than it usually does (I think. I’ll find out for real when I make my tomato tart tomorrow).

I did three things differently:

• I mixed the flour and salt with a spoon, instead of in the mini-cuis.
• I added the butter in smaller batches, scooping up the dry, cornmeal-consistency dough in each batch to try to distribute the butter more evenly. The added benefit of this was that the butter was more evenly distributed and there weren’t as many chunks.
• I poured the water in slowly. For the most successful batch, I added dough, then water, then dough, then water. Adding water just to the top made the dough at the bottom of the cuis get all nice and sticky, but it didn’t blend into the top.

I’d definitely do the parfait layering of the dough and water next time. I also would try to keep the butter colder (maybe cut up a half a stick, and leave the rest in the fridge or put it in the freezer for a bit). My one concern is that all these little batches work the dough too much. But considering that I don’t know what the ill effects of that are (I just know you’re not supposed to do it), I’ll wait until tomorrow AM when I roll it out.

Why does my beer smell like skunk? May 18, 2007

My most recent article for Chow.com, on why beer gets skunked, was just posted here. Check it out.

And, according to my research, pilsners in and of themselves are not more susceptible to skunking (that was added in the edit). Charlie Bamforth, professor of brewing science and chair of the Food Sciences and Technology dept. at UC-Davis, indicated that there aren’t any particular hops or types of beer that skunk more easily. It really just boils down to the color of glass used in the bottle. Although I’d guess that since pilsners and lagers have a more delicate taste, it’s easier to detect the skunked flavor in them.

Novel Drinks May 7, 2007

I was just reading about a Lemon-Thyme Gimlet, on Slashfood, and the author mentioned that he started drinking gimlets after reading about them in Raymond Chandler novels. That’s why I did, too. Philip Marlowe made them sound so damn cool. I prefer mine like Marlowe’s–Rose’s lime juice, not fresh. It made me wonder what other food and drinks I’ve tried just because I’ve read about them in a novel.

(By the way, The Big Lebowski is based, in part, on Chandler’s novel The Big Sleep. The Dude’s Caucasians are his version of Marlowe’s gimlets.)