Category Archives: Recipes

Cooking, Cooking techniques, Farm Box, Food, Recipes

CSA week 4: Rendezvous Meatballs, meatball-free

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Let’s move past that sad pesto, shall we?

The goods:

-Kale
-Mesclun
-Iceberg lettuce
-Sage
-Sugar snap peas
-Cucumbers
-Zucchini
-Weekly eggs

My favorite restaurant in the neighborhood is Rendezvous in Central Square. It’s in a converted Burger King, but it’s just the perfect New American/seasonal kind of place, with great food and fantastic servers. The one downside is that they’ve priced everything just a tad too high for it to be the “we’re regulars” neighborhood joint that the decor and level of formality convey.

Anyway, Rendezvous famously serves a meatball dish (one that the chef has tried to take off the menu but ended up having to reinstate, I’m sure due to people like me calling in and saying “and when we’re there, could we get a few orders of the veal meatballs?”), described as follows: “Braised pork and veal meatballs with toasted orecchiette, maitakes and piave cheese.” We ordered them on our first visit, ages ago, and since then I’ve only ordered something else once, because once someone says “Let’s go to Rendezvous,” I start daydreaming about veal broth.

This dish is heaven. Forget the meatballs, which are great but—in my not-so-humble opinion—the merest decoration. A sideshow, if you will. The mushrooms vary by season but are always divine. The cheese adds a note of sharpness, as do the greens, which are also tossed with the toasted orecchiette. The toasted pasta gives another layer of texture and flavor, instead of just being a backdrop. And the whole thing sits in a pool of broth that cannot be described in words. I’m sure it is the result of restaurant resources, in the form of veal stock and AGES to cook it down, but it’s the kind of broth that you have to hold back from licking out of the bottom of the bowl. I do not, however, hold back from mopping it up with bread.

Ahem.

This dish, it is amazing. And last week I got kale in the CSA and I had very little else in the house aside from frozen pancetta and a bit of cheese and a box of….orecchiette! So I decided to make a Weeknight Tribute To the Best Pasta Ever.

I started by cooking the pancetta in a sacepan. I removed that to drain, and cooked my kale, making it very garlicky and starting with the chopped stems a while before adding the leaves.

(Nature’s colors are always so perfect:)

I asked Ben to pick up fresh mushrooms, and he brought home a dozen nice cremini. (Meanwhile I had also soaked a bunch of dried porcini in boiling water; I bought a cheap bag somewhere and it’s impossible to get the grit out of them but they’re good for making broth.)

When the kale was cooked, I put it aside and put chicken broth, the mushroom broth, halved garlic cloves and a bit of the pancetta in the same pot to cook down while I finished everything else off. Oh, I also boiled the pasta.

(Twirling contents in the broth)

In my large nonstick pan, I sautéed the mushrooms:

Dumped those on the cutting board with the kale and got to work toasting the pasta, which takes longer than you’d expect (I actually didn’t take it as far as I could have.)

When the pasta was toasty (again, it wasn’t toasty enough), I put the mushrooms and kale back in, tossed it all together, plated it with a ladle or two of the broth, and topped it with pancetta and parmesan.

Not. Half. Bad. I certainly wolfed mine down fast. Considering that I was using cremini mushrooms, and Swanson’s Low Sodium chicken broth (doctored up) instead of some kind of amazing veal reduction, I was pretty impressed. Will make again.

But Rendezvous? I love you. Please start serving the pasta-only version of the meatball dish. It’s almost my birthday, you could make it my present. xo!

—

I’m off to Aruba for the wedding of a dear, dear friend! I had a long sundress and dangly earrings. I’ll be back briefly next week, and then off again for some New England Jaunting with my parents. Want a preview of the things I haven’t posted yet (and some that I have)? I finally started using Flickr instead of Picasa for my blog pics, and you can find all my fancy new sets here. Also enjoy some of my all-time favorite photos, the blurry pictures of the signs my nutty and ancient Brooklyn landlord festooned around our building. “Major” use of “inappropriate” punctuation “on those.” (FYI, when he says “Silent-Alarm” he means “high decibal buzzing sound whenever the bolt is unlocked, audible from anywhere in the building.”)

Cooking, Cooking techniques, Farm Box, Food, Recipes

CSA week 3: Questionable “pesto” decisions

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Week 3:

-Lettuce
-Mesclun
-Strawberries
-Beets
-Scallions
-Dill
-Summer squash
-Weekly eggs

I still had the garlic scapes from the previous week hanging around in the crisper, and the greens from this week’s beets were so lovely that I wanted to use them before they wilted. And here, for your eye-rolling pleasure, is where my thought process went: Everyone is making scape pesto this year. Scape pesto is delicious. I don’t have enough scapes to make very much pesto. I will bulk up my pesto with beet greens! I am a genius!

Yeah. This wasn’t a total disaster, but it wasn’t the invention of the best new thing ever, either. I took my lovely, lovely beet greens:

Blanched them, squeezed the water out, and blended them with the chopped up scapes and a bit of oil…

And toasted walnuts and feta (no parmesan in the house, somehow) and more oil, and it turned brown:

Mmm, appetizing! It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t thrilling, either. It lacked zip. I should have added in some garlic.

I sliced up summer squash and zucchini and sauteed those, along with sausage, and mixed it all with pasta for a rather brown and bland and dry meal. Maybe I didn’t add enough oil to the pesto?

Pretty squash!

Ooh, pasta in a pan!

What? Oh, you want to see the actual results? Well FINE.

Blaaaargh. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

And of course I ended up with LOADS of the stuff, which I froze in a muffin tin before transferring to a ziplock. Maybe I’ll add a bit to the israeli cous-cous I’m making tonight.

I wish I’d just made a mini batch of plain scape pesto. Lesson learned!

Cooking, Farm Box, Food, Recipes

Steak salads for the long weekend

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If anyone reading is also a CSA-subscriber, you know how much salad needs to be consumed this month to avoid a total fridge-takeover. I thought I’d post two versions of steak salad that I’ve made in the last month or so, as possible alternatives if you’re not feeling the burgers for Saturday.

Option One: Asian flavors
I generally avoid Rachael Ray (that voice), but I saw a tip once on her show about storing ginger, already peeled and ready to grate, in the freezer. Seemed smart, and when I decided to make a ginger marinade for the last of the Gift Steaks I gave it a shot.

Frozen ginger is really, really hard. I used a small grater, and the shavings were practically dust, which actually was brilliant in salad dressing since there were no chunks of ginger–it sort of dissolved into the dressing. For the marinade I could have used a bit more heft to the gratings. The other good thing, though, is that the strings in the ginger grate nicely when it is frozen, so you don’t have quite the same fiber struggle to contend with.

Anyway, I grated a lot of ginger into a bowl with soy sauce, a pinch of sugar, some sesame oil, toasted sesame seeds, and a bit of chili paste, and marinated the steak in that.

While the meat was marinating, I shaved a head of kohlrabi and a couple radishes into a similar dressing, but with some rice vinegar, no ginger, and a bit less soy.

Finally, I made a third version of the dressing with lots of the ginger and no soy sauce, just rice wine vinegar, sesame oil, peanut oil, etc. I used that to dress a huge salad, then topped it with the kohlrabi/radishes and the grilled, sliced steak:

steak salad

Option Two: Mom’s marinade
This week we were hosting Ben’s uncle for a couple days, and there was a providential break in the weather for just long enough to eat out on the porch!! I marinated flank steak using a recipe from my mom, and served it with the german-style potato salad I made a few times last year.

Rosemary-Mustard Flank Steak Marinade for 3 lbs. flank steak
From the White Dog Café Cookbook, via Kate’s mom

(K’s Mom: “I usually halve this recipe for a 1.5 lb. flank steak; plenty to feed 4-6.” I made the whole thing and froze half, see below. Also, Mom says that while the soy seems odd with these ingredients, it’s just adding umami and you don’t taste it in the end. She’s right.)

¼ Cup Dijon Mustard
2 shallots, chopped
½ Jalapeno pepper, seeded (I used chili paste, Mom uses red pepper flakes.)
2 Tablespoons chopped fresh rosemary leaves
2 Tablespoons soy sauce
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
¾ Cup olive oil

* Combine mustard, shallots, jalapeno, rosemary, soy sauce, and pepper in a food processor.
* Blend to a smooth paste, about 1 minute.
* With the motor running, slowly pour in the oil to form a thick emulsion.
(Note: this marinade can be made up to a week ahead & refrigerated.)
* Rub the meat with the marinade and place in a shallow baking dish.
* Cover with plastic wrap & refrigerate for at least 8 hours and up to 2 days. (I only had about 6-7 hours and while the result was good, it would have been better with overnight marinating!) The texture of flank steak benefits from long marinating.
* Grill or broil the steak until medium-rare, about 5 minutes on a side.
* Let rest 5 minutes before cutting on the bias and serving.

I used the little mini-prep attachment for my stick blender, which worked great, though I had to add the oil in batches instead of trickling it in.

Here is half the marinade doing its thing, while the other half prepares to go in the freezer for next time! Now the marinating-a-day-in-advance thing will be super easy.

Closer to dinner time, I cut up new potatoes and boiled them until they were tender but not crumbling.

I drained them and put them back in the pot, covered, to rest for a few minutes, then mixed them with a cider vinegar/olive oil dressing. In the dressing I mashed up a couple cloves of garlic that I’d boiled with the potatoes.

In the past, like an idiot, I’d boiled the potatoes whole and then cut them up while they were hot. Ouch. This worked way better; you do want to get the potatoes into the dressing hot so they soak it in better. Do this a little while (at least 30 minutes) before you eat, and keep stirring/tasting the potatoes, letting them all get a chance to soak up dressing. You’ll need to adjust the dressing and the seasoning to taste.

I’ve also been on a crouton kick lately, tearing up ciabatta and rubbing it into olive oil and salt, then baking it. I over-baked them this time but they are still so easy and SO delicious, especially if they are a little soft/chewy inside.

We had the salad and croutons under the steak, so the croutons got hit with the dressing and the steak juices, and had the potatoes on the side. Delicious and simple.

—

I hope you all have lovely long weekends! This charming little guy joins me in wishing you well:

Cooking, Family, Farm Box, Food, General, Recipes, Travel

What’s for dinner: BLT Salad

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Here’s what I’m actually cooking tonight, despite incredibly chilly weather that makes it a bit inappropriate. It’s also what I made the night we got back from Italy, which is why I haven’t yet found a homemade creamy dressing recipe I like, and am instead trying to use up a bottle of creamy parmesan dressing from Whole Foods.

Ahem. Anyway. Back in March I was in DC reporting a story and I had the pleasure of visiting with my friends Rachel and Jen. We ate dinner at Matchbox, and I basically bogarted the “Matchbox Chopped Salad,” a genius easy-to-eat BLT with pasta subbing in for bread. When I spotted a sale on grape tomatoes at Whole Foods in my post-flight stupor, I grabbed them and happily spent the next few days eating bowls of this salad. (See note at the end for instructions on making it last!)

Here’s the thing. I used a head of organic iceberg for this, and I really do think that crunch and ease-of-slicing is best. Tonight I have regular leaf lettuce or mesclun (from the 1st CSA box of the season!), but in general if you can find iceberg that is more green than white, it’s great here.

BLT Salad
4 servings

1 small head of good iceberg lettuce
1/4 red onion
1 pint cherry or grape tomatoes
1/2 lb. pasta, preferably a loose spiral or something (I used what I had on hand)
1/2-3/4 of a pound of good, thick-cut bacon (I used hickory-smoked, I think), cooked
Creamy dressing of your choice, to taste

I quartered the grape tomatoes and diced the red onion:

I cooked pasta and then rinsed it in cold water to cool it down, and added that in:

When you’re ready to serve, chop up the cooked bacon (I bake mine in a 400 degree oven until crispy, so it stays flat) and your lettuce, add them to the tomato mixture, and dress to taste. Hold back a few pieces of bacon to scatter on top. It doesn’t look like much but it is soooo good.

Note: To make this keep for a few lunches, as I did, only dress the portion you’re using the first night, using only that proportion of the lettuce and bacon. Store the pasta/tomato mixture in a tupperware and wrap the bacon and lettuce up separately; it takes 2 seconds to chop up some more lettuce and stir everything together with the dressing at lunch time.

(It really is cold out, though. Maybe I should do a absorption pasta with tomatoes and bacon and a salad on the side? Hmm. Oh! I think we got arugula from the CSA. I could stir that in at the end. But I’m craving the salad. Oh dear.)

City Life, Cooking, Cooking techniques, Food, Recipes, The Apartment

Ushering in summer: Bulgogi on the porch

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(I’m in Italy right now, but I thought I’d leave you with an entry or two while I’m gone!)

We eat on our narrow but lovely little porch almost every night during the summer, so we were delighted when the weather first warmed up enough for us to dig out the cushions and dust off the table and chairs. To celebrate, I made bulgogi, the unbelievably tasty Korean barbecued beef that you can cook on your own tabletop griddle at Korean BBQ restaurants.

After grocery shopping in the afternoon, I started by making a batch of daikon radish pickles, which were fine but a bit bland.

daikon

The daikon I got from th CSA was less carrot-shaped and much fatter. Different varieties, I guess! Aren’t the patterns in the slices pretty?

daikon slices

I used a basic marinade recipe from AllRecipes, spiked with plenty of sesame (seeds and oil) and soy. The real trick to recipes like this is to freeze your meat for about an hour before slicing it. That makes it to easy to slice nice thin pieces without the meat mushing all over the place. Remember to cut against the grain. (I used sirloin tips, I think.)

sliced steak

I marinated the meat for a couple hours, and when dinner time rolled around I cooked some sushi rice and dished out kimchi and the daikon pickles:

I also washed a bunch of lettuce leaves for wrapping.

The meat was a snap to cook because it was sliced so thin. From this:

to this:

took about two minutes for each batch, on a hot grill. I piled up the meat on a plate, squeezed all the various dishes onto our porch table, and we got to the messy business of wrapping our little rolls, starting with a base of rice, then meat, then the pickles and kimchi:

I’m hungry as I write this, so let’s take another look at that luscious, flavorful meat:

It was a perfect kickoff to summer, lit by the pale glimmer of our new Ikea solar string lights and washed down with gin and lemonade! I’m dying to go do some research at Koreana and make note of more of the little bowls of pickles that they bring over–there are usually about 20 and they are my favorite part. Great, now I’m starving.

City Life, Cooking, Cooking techniques, Family, Food, General, Home, Recipes, Travel, Vintage

Chili, cornbread, and leftovers

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It was months ago that I saw a chili recipe on Oh Happy Day and thought “must make.” And, actually, it was months ago that I made it–oops! Jordan called this “Pepper’s Famous Chili,” and I think it’s a great starting point to play with. I’ve made it a couple times and it is a bountiful and delicious recipe, extremely filling.

“Pepper’s Famous Chili
As seen on Oh Happy Day!

1lb. ground beef
1 (15 oz.) can tomato sauce
1 (15 oz.) can kidney beans with liquid
1 (15 oz.) can pinto beans with liquid
1/2 c. diced onion
1/4 c. diced celery
2 med. tomatoes, chopped
1 tsp. cumin
1 T. chili powder (2 T. if you like it hot)
1 tsp. black pepper
2 tsp. salt
1 c. water

Brown beef and drain liquid. Crumble beef and put into a large pot mix in all other ingredients. Cook over low heat stirring every 15 to 20 mins. for 2 to 3 hours. (You could also use a slow cooker.)”

I bought everything at Trader Joe’s, so the sizes of the cans of beans were a bit varied, but I don’t think it matters. And one time I made it with stew beef instead of ground beef, with moderate success–you need more meat, it turns out, and Tom was visiting and we ran into a bit of a problem while browning the meat (too much liquid, too small a pan), so it wasn’t as flavorful as it could be. Both times, I made cornbread muffins to accompany the chili, first using an Epicurious recipe, then ceding control to Tom for his favorite recipe.

Ingredients:

The fresh stuff livens up all those cans of beans and sauce:

tomatoes onions celery

Honestly the cooking process doesn’t present many opportunities for photos. You brown the beef, then throw everything in together for a couple hours. (Incidentally, I didn’t have chili powder and cumin but I thought I did. I ended up using a taco seasoning mix from the awesome spice shop in Inman Sq., which worked just fine.)

Here’s the result with ground beef:
chili cornbread

Good stuff, easy to make. Not bad! I must say, we were eating leftovers for what felt like a year. I think next time (and it took me two batches to think of it; I am so braindead lately!) I’ll freeze half.

—

Oh man, while Tom was visiting we hit the slightly pathetic array of thrift stores in the neighborhood, as per tradition, and the one good find was a  sweet white-enamel 8-inch Copco cast iron frying pan for a couple bucks. It was *filthy* but we soaked it in soapy water and scrubbed it with barkeeper’s friend and fine steel wool, and now it’s in really great shape. Love.

Before:

After:
clean

Fantastic shape—I love the little pour spout.
copco frying pan
—

Note: Why yes, I’m posting things I cooked in March, why do you ask? The good news is that I’m hoping to pull together a couple posts to publish while I’m away next week. In Italy. HURRAY! (Also? Panic. I get so freaked out before trips because I loathe packing, never feel like I have the right clothes, and actually never do have the right shoes. I’ve got a fresh sketchbook and some maps, we should be fine!)

And: 1 more month until CSA time! Thank god.

Cooking, Family, Food, Good stuff, Recipes

Sour cream coffee cake for a happy weekend

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Do any of you get the Zingerman’s mail order catalog? When I was in preschool we lived in Ann Arbor while my Dad was in grad school, and my parents were big fans of the then-new Zingerman’s Deli. They now have an amazing mail order service, and my mom always ordered stuff from them as gifts. I do the same—few things are a more surefire hit than a coffee cake in a wooden hatbox, especially when the coffee cake is a really, really good one. They also have exceptional customer service, with real people on the phone who want to help you. HOWEVER. The prices are a bit steep for personal consumption, which is why I’m grateful for this recipe, which my mom has been making for as long as I can remember. It’s a heavy, dense cake, extremely moist and long-lasting (if you don’t eat it all up!).

Sour Cream Coffee Cake
Batter:
1 C. butter
2 C. sugar
2 eggs
1 C. sour cream
½ teaspoon vanilla
2 C. flour
½ teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt

Streusel:
½ C. brown sugar
½ C. pecans or walnuts
1 teaspoon cinnamon

* Preheat oven to 350
* Grease and flour a bundt pan; set aside
* Cream together the butter and sugar until fluffy
* Add eggs one-at-a-time and mix
* Add sour cream and vanilla and mix
* Sift together the dry ingredients and add, mixing just until incorporated
* Pour half the batter into the prepared pan
* Strew streusel over batter
* Top with rest of batter
* Bake about 60 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean

One thing I’ve noticed (I made the cake twice so far): It might be a bit too much streusel topping. Try to make sure there is cake batter exposed around the edges, or at least not a thick layer of the streusel, so the cake doesn’t end up with top and bottom halves, unconnected to each other.

The tricky bit it adding the second half of the thick, sticky batter, on top of the streusel. Careful dabbing with a spatula seems to work:

I have had some trouble with my oven ever since we bought the Viking. It’s not noticeable when I’m cooking meat, but when baking I sometimes find that nothing is happening after I’ve put the pan in. As in, the temperature has dropped to 150 and the baked goods are just sitting there, flabby and pale and sad. I was on the phone with Mom the first time I made this, so I popped it in the oven and kind of ignored it until about 45 minutes in, when I saw that the batter had set a bit but definitely not baked. It took an additional HOUR to cook. Anyway, that’s my oven’s problem, not the recipe’s. But does anyone else with a gas oven have that happen?

Not the best distribution of streudel on that outing, but still a great cake. I baked the first one for a girl’s weekend a couple months ago, and Bridge declared it the best coffee cake ever! But really, how can you go wrong with 2 sticks of butter, a cup of sour cream, and all that sugar? Soooo healthy.

Cooking, Cooking techniques, Food, Recipes

Dubious combo, great results

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(By the way, I went back and added some photos to my last post, including a teensy tiny baby hand, aw!)

If you read Apartment Therapy’s The Kitchn, you may have seen a complete rave review of a Jamie Oliver recipe for chicken braised in milk, with lemon, sage and cinnamon. I have been burned several times by classic italian pork-in-milk recipes, but for some reason I had to go out and make the chicken version immediately. The writer, Faith, accidentally misread the recipe and covered the chicken for 2/3 of the cooking time, then tested it uncovered and preferred the covered version, so I followed her lead.

Here’s the recipe, from Jamie.

I think the ingredients look like a still-life–maybe I should paint them!

Though things aren’t as scenic if you zoom out:

The recipe is seriously easy. I hate hate hate cooking chicken, especially whole chickens, but the braising aspect made me more comfortable. The most annoying part is browning the chicken in the butter and oil, since it’s awkward to flip it around in the pan.

In an hour and a half of unsupervised (mostly) cooking, this unappetizing sight:

Turned into this:

I have never had crispier skin on a roast chicken; not sure why. The fat rendered out of it completely. And I’ll add my voice to those of Faith and Jamie in saying not to freak out at that curdled sauce. It tastes amazing. The first night we had shredded meat on rolls, as little sandwiches:

And the next night we had more of it (with that delicious, nasty-looking sauce) with israeli cous cous and sauteed greens:

We ate the meat for about a week, and it was scrumptious hot or cold. I’ll definitely make it again, maybe omitting the cinnamon if I want slightly more versatile leftovers, though it gave a really nice musky flavor. It hurts to use a whole stick of butter to brown the chicken and then toss it out, but I saved mine in a pyrex in the fridge, so maybe I could re-use it? It’s lovely browned butter now; I wonder if it would burn on a second use. Anyway, compared to dry-roasting a chicken, this method was way less stressful and gave really juicy, tender meat. As I said, I followed Faith’s lucky “mistake” and kept the pot covered for the first hour, opening it for the last 30 minutes to crisp up.

City Life, Cooking, Cooking techniques, Disasters, Food, Recipes, The Apartment

One-stop-shop for amazing messes

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Ok, so. I have spoken before about my unending love for Jamie at Home, and back in February I watched the pizza episode and promptly felt the urge to make dough from scratch. Hurray! It’s so easy! (Note: I had a tremendously bad day leading up to this attempt.)

Pizza Dough
adapted from Jamie Oliver‘s Jamie at Home
7 cups strong white bread flour or 5 cups strong white bread flour plus 2 cups finely ground semolina flour (next time I want to try it w/ semolina)
1 level tablespoon fine sea salt
2 (1/4-ounce) packets active dried yeast
1 tablespoon raw sugar
4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 1/2 cups lukewarm water

pizza ingredients

Ok. So you’re supposed to sift the flour and salt together into a mountain on the counter. No sweat! I am a brave person who will go ahead and work straight on the butcher block. No fear! Mountain, ahoy!

flour

Now, that photo does not accurately depict the towering majesty of the 7-cup flour mountain. It was tall and steep. Back to the recipe:

“In a large measuring cup, mix the yeast, sugar and olive oil into the water and leave for a few minutes, then pour into the well. Using a fork, bring the flour in gradually from the sides and swirl it into the liquid. Keep mixing, drawing larger amounts of flour in, and when it all starts to come together, work the rest of the flour in with your clean, flour-dusted hands. Knead until you have a smooth, springy dough.”

Sounds easy enough, and Jamie made it look like a cakewalk on the show. Proceed: Liquids mixed with sugar and yeast:

liquids

Commence whisking, while feeling extremely smug and craftsmanlike:

whisking flour

Here’s the important part: Get cocky and pour in too much liquid at once, collapsing the walls of the too-tall mountain and flooding yeasty-oil-water down the dishwasher and your pants. And socks. And under the baseboards. Stand stock still while it gushes over, before fitfully trying to shove flour into the liquid to stop the onslaught. Grab paper towels to make a moat, then take a photo that doesn’t come close to portraying the chaos:

mess

(Aren’t I brave, giving you the warts-and-all view into my kitchen?)

Take stock, recognizing that you have used nearly all of the flour in the house, all the yeast, and you don’t have an alternate plan for dinner. Decide to soldier on, mixing what liquid is left on the counter into the flour and then adding additional water and kneading until, miracle beyond miracles, the dough pulls together into a gorgeous, silky smooth ball.

Set it to rise while you pry off the baseboards and scrub yeasty flour paste off the inside of the cabinet doors.

Now, back to the original plan!

“Place the ball of dough in a large flour-dusted bowl and flour the top of it. Cover the bowl with a damp cloth and place in a warm room for about 1 hour until the dough has doubled in size.

Now remove the dough to a flour-dusted surface and knead it around a bit to push the air out with your hands – this is called punching down the dough. You can either use it immediately, or keep it, wrapped in plastic wrap, in the fridge (or freezer) until required. If using straightaway, divide the dough up into as many little balls as you want to make pizzas – this amount of dough is enough to make about six to eight medium pizzas. “

Fine! The dough rose, though maybe not quite as much as normal:

I froze half and made the other half into four pizzas:

dough balls

It rolled out like a dream, not sticky like store-bought dough:

I made half with flat edges and half with pinched crusts like my mom does, to see which I preferred. (Note: The Food Network version of the recipe doesn’t specify baking time or temp. I cranked my oven to around 450 and just watched the pizzas carefully; I think they took about 10 minutes but I could be wrong.)

Pinched won:

And dinner did eventually get served. Without the 45 minutes of cleaning up the kitchen, it would have been a really easy process.

(BTW I think I’m over white pies, at least with the slightly-dry cheese blend I have been using. The other half of the dough got slathered with various sauces, to be explained in a future post.)

(Also, I’m totally uninspired and haven’t been cooking much. Is it just the late-winter doldrums? Anyone else feeling it, too?)

Cooking, Cooking techniques, Food, General, Recipes

Love and baked goods

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Ben has moved on from breakfast pancakes or oatmeal on weekend mornings, and has discovered the connection between organized personalities and the joys of baking. In addition to churning out no-knead bread for his lunch sandwiches, he has recently started baking biscuits.

Our downstairs neighbor, Jean, is a lovely lady who hails from North Carolina. At her annual pre-Christmas tree-trimming party, she serves about as much food as a table can hold, but the highlight is the delicious ham accompanied by basket after basket of tender buttermilk biscuits. This year we asked for the recipe, and not only did she e-mail it to me, she brought us back a bag of biscuit flour from her holiday trip down South! Now that is neighborly.

Ben and I made the biscuits together the first time, but since then he’s been making them before I wake up on the weekend, including Valentine’s morning. I strongly equate love with baked goods (don’t we all?), so it was a wonderful start to the day!

BEST BISCUITS
(From Jean)

Cut together 2 cups self rising flour with 1/2 cup (1 stick) of butter (I use unsalted) until well blended. Add a pinch of salt if you want. I do this step in the food processor, then dump it into a bowl to add the buttermilk.

Add 3/4 cup buttermilk and gently mix until moistened. Do not overmix

Turn out on a floured surface and knead very gently a few times (pat it, really) until the dough forms a coherent ball. Do not knead vigorously like you would knead bread.

Pat out to about 3/4 inch think, cut with a round cutter, and bake at 450 degrees for 10-12 minutes.

The biscuits will be better if you use Southern Biscuit or White Lily flour –something about soft wheat, I think. But they will be good anyhow.

This was the first batch, a bit raggedy because we were so careful not to overwork the dough. It does need (ha!) a few kneads to pull together.

One of Ben’s finished batches, complete with lovely presentation!

Topped with my mom’s raspberry jam, they are unspeakably good. Sadly, we used up the last of the jam in the biscuit mania.

Not bad, right?

Now, as if waking up to fresh biscuits weren’t the way to a girl’s heart, Ben made me dinner for Valentine’s day. But not just any dinner. I ordered him to take photos, but I had no idea what he was making, and he recreated the meal I always always order at my favorite restaurant in NYC, Inoteca. At least, what I always ordered: On my last visit it came to light that they have changed the fantastic romaine-raddichio-ricotta salata salad that I’ve loved for years. Good thing we started making it at home a while ago.

Ben’s perfect salad (he added a couple drops of truffle oil for good measure):

TRUFFLED EGG TOAST!!

I have meant to make that at home for years but never did. There was a slight mis-reading of the recipe (you’re not supposed to use whole eggs, just egg yolks), but on the whole it was a swoonily romantic and delicious gesture. Best Valentine’s ever! (He even got cupcakes for dessert.)

Here’s what he made Sunday morning:
french toast

He’s making meatballs again as I type. I think Ben has spent much more time in the kitchen than I have lately, and I’m not complaining.

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Stay tuned for brussels sprouts (and creative use of leftovers) and an epic mess.