It’s been hard to say it’s Winter lately; the whole month of December (and most of January) felt positively balmy compared to past years. Hardly even a flake of snow, though I understand that all changes tomorrow.
Nevertheless, I’ve been starting my days with a warming, cozy bowl of steel-cut oats (heavy on the cinnamon, just a pinch of cayenne) and a cup of coffee.
And this little guy shows up sometimes.
Some scenes from my wild New Year’s Eve, pleasantly spent at home in the company of a slightly under-the-weather boyfriend. I lit candles, and put on a dress and heels, because it just isn’t New Year’s without some fancy-pants luxury. He put on a suit, bless’im.
First, a Sazerac…
…which went nicely with the requisite black-eyed peas and cabbage (for luck and money, respectively).
like a good southern girl
Breaking with tradition, I made corn-buttermilk popovers instead of cornbread to posh things up a little. These didn’t quite pop over perfectly, but they tasted good all the same.
We watched a movie, and shook up another cocktail to toast with at midnight. After some Auld Lang Syne, it was video games until bedtime.
No cabs. No crowds. No hangover. Simple. Easy. Perfect. Exactly the right start.
Happy New Year.
My oh my, I haven’t given you all a recipe in ages, have I? Poor darlings, here you go.
Over dinner the other night, I helped a dear friend brainstorm ideas for her family’s Christmas feast. They planned on salmon, but needed ideas for something festive to dress it up. Fennel immediately sprung to mind, in a sort of raw relish, with a heavy dose of lemon.
Which would be, you know, okay, but it’s not good enough. Not for Christmas.
A quick google didn’t turn up exactly the soignée dish I had in mind, just page after page of fennel and cucumber summat-er-other. I wasn’t inspired at all until one word caught my eye: beets. Yes! Beets! Fennel and beets! Anise-y crunch with earthy sweetness. Perfect.
I wrote my friend an email, containing a sort of recipe that came out as a stream of consciousness, as I pictured what I might reach for were I making it right then. Roasted beets. Raw fennel, small dice. Toasted fennel seeds. Shallot. Lemon. Garlic. Olive oil. And loads of herbs. I was confident.
i love staining my cutting board on occasion
Of course, I had to try it out for myself. (Can’t let everyone else have all the fun, right?) A couple of filets of sockeye later, cooked according to my latest go-to, foolproof, perfect-every-time method, which you should absolutely try as soon as possible, my confidence turned into unabashed pride.
It’s crunchy, it’s sweet, it’s raw, it’s roasted, it’s bright, and it’s just killer with a fine piece of salmon. It’s exactly what I was going for.
Here’s hoping it can liven more than one holiday table this year. Bon appétit!
This relish is stunning served with a simple roast salmon, though I suspect darn near any fish would work quite well too. I can also see this as an hors d'oeuvre, with crostini and a tangy goat cheese, or even as a topping on those dreadful endive boats (if you insist on using them).
You may notice that the recipe calls for golden beets, while I clearly used red beets in the photos; if you don't mind a little staining, it doesn't matter which you use. Use both, if you like.
If you can, make this several hours or even a day in advance. It's one of those recipes that drastically improves with a little rest.
Ingredients
Instructions
In case anyone was wondering – and you were all wondering, right? – this is the birthday cake I made for my boyfriend this year.
It’s a tradition that I ask him every year what kind of cake he wants, and in return he gives me not a flavor, but a fairly broad category that I can have fun with. These have included “fruit”, “cookie”, and “something that most people wouldn’t even want to try based solely on the description”. Good times.
This year, the challenge was “super spice cake”. So I made a super-gingery ginger cake with spiced poached pears, and lemon ice cream for a clean counterpoint.
Recipes for the ginger cake and poached pears are both from David Lebovitz‘s Ready For Dessert, one of the smartest cookbook investments I’ve ever made. Every. Single. Recipe. is flawless, and turns out exactly as described.
The ginger cake (recipe can be found here) has so much ginger in it, you’ll think it’s a typo. But have faith, because you’ll be rewarded with an incredibly moist cake that’s bursting at the seams with fresh, clean, super ginger flavor. Did I mention moist? This cake, cut and covered loosely with plastic wrap at room temperature, did not dry out even a little bit. Not even the cut edges. Not even after a week or more. Absolument incroyable.
The pears, lightly spiced, were a delightful addition, and in any other setting would be stars in their own right. But here they were clearly in a supporting role. A similar recipe to the one I used can be found here, on Mr. Lebovitz’s blog.
But the lemon ice cream… oh!, the lemon ice cream. The recipe (which you can find here) is from Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams at Home, by Jeni Britton Bauer. And people, if you have an ice cream maker, and you don’t have this book, you’re cheating yourself. It’s not just a gorgeous book to look at, the recipes are inventive and result in textbook-perfect texture for your homemade ice creams, sorbets, and ices. Listen to this woman, she knows exactly what she’s doing with ice cream. I might not ever use anyone else’s ice cream recipes.
This lemon ice cream strikes the elusive ideal balance between tart, sweet, and creamy. Even better, the headnote of the recipe said she developed it to pair with an intense and dark ginger cake. I was practically forced to make it. The result couldn’t have been better. I’m intending to use up part of the remaining ice cream in ginger cookie ice cream sandwiches, it went together so well.
Again, recipes:
Ginger Cake
Poached Pears
Lemon Ice Cream
happy birthday indeed
We had Thanksgiving dinner! You know, um, two weeks ago. (Give or take a day.) I bet you did, too.
I took some pictures, and thought you might like to see them.
For hors d’oeuvres, we had a date and kumquat chutney…
…served with a round of soft Camembert, the World’s Best Spiced Pretzel-Nut mixture, and the World’s Best Spiced Peanuts. Black pepper water crackers are always a must.
There was also a cocktail hour, featuring a rye and amaro concoction that required a few attempts at mixing and sampling to perfect, simple as the recipe seems. I think it was four tries before we hit the real magic. Perseverance always pays off.
The entrée was a couple of wild pheasants, barded with bacon and braised whole with aromatics, juniper, and bay. They were hunted by a friend of a friend (thank you, Sergei!), and were pretty fabulous, if I do say so myself. On the same platter are roasted wedges of acorn squash. To the right of the pheasant is a sweet corn spoonbread, which might’ve risen higher if I had a proper soufflé dish, but I don’t need to keep one around for how often I make soufflés (this might be the second or third time in this apartment).
This is cornbread, chestnut, and andouille dressing. I think dressing is my favorite part of the typical All-American Thanksgiving Dinner. Basically just bread and vegetables, maybe a little meat for flavor, what else do you need?
I don’t know about you, but I think this dish is hilarious. It’s my nod to that perennial favorite, jellied cranberry sauce in a can. Thanksgiving dinner was never complete without it when I was little, and it turns out it was always my boyfriend’s favorite part, too. It was stupidly simple; I just made a fancy cranberry sauce (half recipe of that beast) and molded it in a can. But the solids that I was supposed to trash – instead I strained and jazzed them up with a little port and some orange zest – have been my favorite leftover. Sandwiches, curries, cheese on crackers, they all go splendidly.
For bread, I made these mustard rolls, because Thanksgiving requires a softer-crust roll. Ciabatta or a baguette just doesn’t seem right.
Dessert was a Paris-Brest, from a Cook’s Illustrated recipe. I usually trust CI with my life, but I feel they really dropped the ball with this one (or maybe I did). It looked pretty enough, but there were issues. The choux paste was fine, but it didn’t behave like my usual recipe. The hazelnut crème chiboust filling was a little too stiff with gelatin, and didn’t melt on the tongue like you’d expect it to. It was just okay, and I was sorry to have wasted the poor hazelnuts on it. Yes, I’m very picky about the desserts I make.
pretty, though
On this plate, you can see the raw kale and brussels sprout salad I included for a little verdant crunch among the other rich dishes. This salad is so, so, so good. It’s earned a place in my short go-to list. Full-flavored, crunchy, and ridiculously nutritious. I could eat it every day.
For you oenophiles, the wine was a charming little number from the South of France, a blend of… some… kind… of grapes. It had a woodcock on the label, and the old European gentleman I purchased it from assured me without hesitation that this was the wine for pheasant. (I mean, come one, there was a game bird right on the bottle! Who was I to argue?) Turns out he was so very right; it was a perfect match.
Hope you all had a fabulous Thanksgiving!
After a reasonably intense couple of weeks, I deserved a night off.
broccoli goma-ae, seaweed salad
This is also known as reason #39584 that I love living in a city: sushi delivery. This place is so great. Love how they didn’t toss the broccoli with the sauce. I hate when broccoli is sodden with thick sauce caught in the florets; it makes me want to rinse it off.
The leftovers were pretty great for late breakfast, too.
First, a little something healthy before the big feast.
This is beet greens sautéed with Tuscan kale and plenty of garlic, over brown rice. Parmesan on top, of course.
And a few previews of my Thanksgiving menu, still in progress:
wild pheasants
bread
hazelnuts
cranberry sauce
choux paste
dessert
More later. Until then, Happy Thanksgiving!
For dinner last night: roasted Brussels sprouts, tossed with black and white sesame seeds, fish sauce, soy sauce, and sriracha. Served over soba noodles tossed with toasted sesame oil, topped with Maytag blue cheese and green onions. Cornbread on the side, because cornbread and Brussels sprouts are good friends.
Sesame oil and soba noodles has got to be one of the best flavor combinations of all time. The smell is just intoxicating. I could eat it every day.
The sprouts were roasted according to a method in a recent Cook’s Illustrated: toss with oil, salt, pepper, and 1 T water. Roast in a sheet pan cut-side down and covered with foil at 500° F for 10 minutes, uncover and roast another 10 minutes or so. They steam gently, and the texture and browning are perfect. It’s my new go-to for Brussels sprouts.
Dinner, from the book I cannot stop using: Plenty, by Yotam Ottolenghi. I must be sounding like a broken record, but that cookbook has majorly influenced the way I cook, both at home and for clients.
This is his Beet, Orange, and Black Olive Salad (and I didn’t send you, but you can find the recipe here). The flavors in this one are not shy, but much more toned-down than you’d think by looking at the ingredient list. Overall, it’s extremely well balanced, a little unusual, and absolutely fabulous.
I modified the recipe by roasting (not boiling) the 4 smallish beets for 45 minutes at 425° F, and serving it over a mixture of quinoa and red rice (1/2 cup and 1/3 cup respectively, by dry measure, cooked separately but concurrently).
The (ahem) red salad green was something I picked up at the farmers’ market, and which nomenclature I promptly forgot. It looked like a cross between frisée and some spindly arugula, and had a lovely bitterness.
For the olives, I used the wrinkly oil-cured type because that’s what I had. Those are super-pungent and normally bully past every other flavor, but here, they were actually subdued. I might chop them a little smaller next time (I basically just halved them here), but not by much. The saltiness jumping out every so often, not in every bite, was excellent.
Oh yes, and it’s scallions instead of red onion. I forgot the red onion at the store.
Did everyone get their fill of Halloween candy?
Oh, good.
And now for something a little virtuous on All Saints’ Day, to help bring you down from the sugar high: radishes sautéed with brown butter and a spot of anchovy, tossed with kimchi, radish tops, and brown rice. Top it all off with a luscious fried egg, because hey hey, even saints need a little luxury.
Chopping the radishes into irregular chunks makes for a more visually interesting dish, gives variance in texture, and makes the work go faster. Feel free to be more precise if you're having the Queen over for dinner.
This recipe calls for cooked brown rice, something I usually have in the fridge. My favorite method for cooking brown rice is from Alton Brown, and results in perfect brown rice. Every. Single. Time. You're welcome.
Ingredients
Instructions
