February 2011
20 posts
10 tags
filet mignon + garlic mashed potatoes + onion &...
Who am I kidding; it’s impossible to spoil my appetite. So, yes, I carried on with the steak dinner plans directly following those cannoli. Go big or go home.
Steak & potatoes:
4 filet mignon steaks
4 Idaho potatoes
10 cloves garlic
4 shiitake mushrooms
3 tbsp butter
1 tbsp olive oil
1/4 cup milk
salt & pepper
Wash potatoes and cut into quarters, skin on. Peel 6 garlic...
6 tags
cannoli: in which my obsession with buddy valastro...
There are some things that you just have to consume the moment they’re placed in front of you, no matter what time of day it is or what the context. They rely entirely on the present moment. These things include a cheese omelette straight out of the pan, freshly baked bread, a Smirnoff ice if you are a bro, and anything from Carlo’s* if you are me. So when my boyfriend got home at 4:45...
January 2011
14 posts
7 tags
homemade hamburger buns & juicy lucys
A Juicy Lucy, apparently the official term which I’d never heard until yesterday, is an inside-out cheeseburger: a burger with a “molten core of cheese” that “gushes out at the first bite”, to quote the Wiki. I’d suggest you go as heavy on the cheese as architectural logistics allow: I used a mixture of sharp white and yellow cheddar, but I imagine American...
4 tags
baked buffalo wings
These buffalo wings are baked, not fried, for the semblance of being a little bit healthier. They still come out crispy and delicious.
Baked buffalo wings:
10-15 pieces chicken wings and/or drumsticks
1/2 cup flour
1 tbsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp cayenne
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 cup melted butter
1 cup buffalo or hot pepper sauce
Pour dry ingredients into a large resealable plastic bag, close and...
6 tags
eataly
Today was my first trip to Mario Batali’s Eataly, the more-than-a-marketplace-more-than-a-restaurant on 23rd and 5th that opened last August with aspirations to make accessible a high-quality selection of food, both prepared and in its most raw forms. As a concept, it’s fantastic - the grocery prices were in some cases lower than my local supermarkets (i.e. alaskan salmon filets by the...
8 tags
sausage & olive calzones
TLC’s Kitchen Boss premiered this week, starring Buddy of Cake Boss and Hoboken’s Carlo’s Bake Shop fame. Since I’m currently living approximately four blocks from this pinnacle of food geekery, I’ll admit I’ve grown a little worshipful. Seriously, this is quite possibly my favorite state in the U.S. I grew up in South Jersey with three uncles named Tony and...
4 tags
caraway seed dinner rolls
One of my favorite things about cooking is the way that taste is tied to memory, and through memories to other flavors. Taste is sensory, but flavor is psychologically incorporated into the experience of eating. These associations are surprisingly strong. Taste memory is the reason I got away with making “oatmeal raisin” cookies for my brother last Christmas when it was too late to go...
7 tags
italian pot roast
Pot roast is something we never ate when I was growing up. My mom claims “not to get it” - that the texture of braised beef is wholly unappealing to her - and my dad, having been raised Italian Catholic, only ever made spaghetti & clam sauce, broiled salmon, or, inexplicably, boiled cabbage & potatoes. Many of my more WASPish friends remember pot roast as something their...
5 tags
olive bread
“…a niche in which is a lamp, the lamp inside a glass, the glass like a brilliant star, lit from a blessed tree, an olive, neither of the east nor of the west, its oil all but giving off light even if no fire touches it. Light upon light.” (Quran, 24:35)
Bread could easily be my favorite thing to make from scratch. The first time I tried was my first Thanksgiving...
5 tags
nachos for breakfast
After years of experimental guacamole-making, I’m a firm believer in the five-ingredient rule: 1 ripe avocado, 1 small tomato, half a small onion, lime juice and a pinch of salt. Cilantro if you like it, but I’m one of these people. I’ve tried it with lemon, or garlic, or cayenne, or olive oil, etc., etc., but less is more with guac. My brother taught me the slice-and-spoon...
6 tags
capricious candy cookies
My ongoing problem with trying to avoid sugar is the inevitable backlash. Tonight after some spot-hitting KFC (Korean not Kentucky), I absolutely wanted dessert. I wanted cookies. Warm cookies. Melty, chocolatey cookies. And I had to make them immediately, on a whim, before the craving passed and I changed my mind.With desserts, my philosophy is the more ingredients the better (which a couple of...
6 tags
blue cheese cornbread
Saturdays are for big, late, in-pajamas breakfasts bordering on brunch. I’m in the midst of a serious cornbread kick (at least until I get through this bag of corn meal) and this one is based on some blue cheese and onion confit cocktail empanadas I had here last night at dinner. The filling was intense but the empanada pastry was mediocre and way too doughy. This morning’s cornbread...
6 tags
cannellini bean & vegetable soup
I’m a big fan of Pete Wells’ Cooking With Dexter column in the New York Times, and I particularly remember reading this one last September. It’s about mise en place, which is the prevalent idea in restaurant kitchens (and bleeding over into the home cooking revival of recent past) that everything you need in a recipe should be laid out, washed, measured, chopped and...
8 tags
beef stock + cheddar & sausage cornbread
Last Sunday we went to the River Palm in Edgewater, New Jersey, for my boyfriend’s mom’s birthday and what turned out to be the best steak I’ve eaten in recent memory. I wanted a bone-in ribeye with onion rings and mashed potatoes. I was micromanaged into getting a porterhouse for two, which made me really glad that I’m a woman and don’t have to do silly things like...
