What to Cook for Dinner: Nicole’s Favorites

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

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

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.

Good Food Day

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

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

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

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.

But can they do a Mona Lisa?

Latte art, from slashfood.

Today’s Vocabulary: Sunday 8 April 2007

Regent’s Park

Originally uploaded by commamommas.

meat and veg: one of the British terms Liz often uses
top drawer: great, top notch, Neumann’s favorite British expression
great tits: a bird–and when I say “bird,” I don’t mean in the British sense of “a woman,” I mean in the flying feathered critter sense

Since I ate all the Hot Cross Buns I bought at the Borough Market (they would have gone stale anyway), Liz and I bought more at the farmers market near Notting Hill Gate on Saturday. It’s a cute farmers’ market: two cheese vendors, two bread vendors, yummy fresh apple juice blends (Liz bought the apple and beetroot, which was delicious and a bright pink color), meat, etc. We picked up some pork tenderloin, kale, and parsnips for Easter dinner (Liz wanted a “meat and two veg” meal).

To digress briefly, I don’t see where London gets a bad rap for food. There are plenty of places that serve healthy food on the streets and in the airports. Liz buys mostly organic stuff, which is fairly easy the farmers markets everywhere. That should serve as a reminder to me that I need to go to the Noe Valley Farmers Market more often.

Easter morning–er, midday–we took the Tube to Regent’s Park, which was “absolutely…top drawer,” as Neumann would say. We walked around the park for a while, and checked out St. John’s Wood (which felt like a really traditional English garden), and all the people who were out doing exactly what we were doing: enjoying the sunny day.

The streams there have so many ducks, swans, and other birds, including according to one sign, Great Tits. I’m not sure who did the Beavis and Butthead laugh at that point, but I’m sure someone did, or at least thought it.

We walked back through Marylebone, got some falafel, stopped briefly at a small museum there (the Wallace Museum?) for the last fifteen minutes it was open, then walked back through Hyde Park. Liz made pork tenderloin with prosciutto in dough, kale, and roasted parsnips. Then for dessert, we cracked open the Easter egg from Michel Chaudun chocolatiers in Paris and ate Liz’s strawberry rhubarb crumble. Two good bottles of wine (with screw caps–the Brits don’t have issues with that, they’re so darn practical). It was the best Easter ever (in London).

Today’s vocabulary: Friday 6 April 2007

Cheese Vendor, Borough Market

Originally uploaded by commamommas.

Take the piss: to tease
With all the bits: with everything

One benefit to visiting your temporarily expat friends almost a year into their time abroad is that you benefit from all the visitors who have come before you. Liz recommended a walk near the Tower of London, across Tower Bridge, and up to the Tate Modern, which was the main museum I wanted to visit to help me complete my international hat trick of modern art museums: SFMoMA, Centre Pompidou, and the Tate Modern.

Before I headed out, I stopped at the Orange store to see if I could top off my SIM card, but I had to buy a new one. Still, the SIM card was free, and I just put 10 pounds on it. Not bad.

Today’s a bank holiday, plus, it appears that a bunch of European countries have holy week off, so everything was packed with tourists like me.

I walked along the Thames, decided that cities with rivers running through them are much cooler than cities without rivers running through them, took a photo of City Hall (which, according to my guide book, a London mayor refers to it as “the testicle”), and wandered down to Borough Market for lunch.

Tucked away under what feel almost like overpasses, the Borough Market is your typical farmers market, but with cheese from all over Europe, fresh-baked bread and pastries, fish and meats, and even, presumably for Easter, freshly killed rabbits that you can de-fur yourself at home. I bought Boeren Stelutelleidsekaas (a cumin-flavored Dutch farmhouse cheese made with skim milk) from Boerenkass and a Northern Italian cheese made from sheep’s and goat’s milk from some guy who didn’t ID his business at his stall.

At the unidentified stall, I pointed to one cheese with a really pretty rind, and the guy said, “That? That’s poisonous. I just have that to take the piss out of guys when they want to try stronger and stronger cheeses.”

Sausage sandwich

Originally uploaded by commamommas.

For lunch, I decided to continue my pattern of ordering something I’ve never had before. The woman in line before me asked about the wild boar sausage. “Is it like pork?” “It is, but it’s quite gamey,” the woman said. I’ve realized gamey isn’t a negative here. I ordered one, too. “Would you like all the bits?” she asked–all the bits being a slathering of cranberry sauce, a bed of rocket, and cooked onions on top. Delicious.

Off to the Bramah’s Tea and Cofee Museum, which is well worth the 3 pounds when you factor in the big souvenir book they give you (and the opportunity to see the biggest teapot in the world), then to the Tate Modern, where you can get free tickets to go down a slide from the second, third, fourth, or fifth floors. They were booked up when I was there, but it looked like fun.