My local market sells a 2.5 ounce box of mediocre kale chips, seasoned with weird stuff like cashews and brewer’s yeast, for $7. Why don’t I just try making my own? I thought, remembering how well my pilot-light-warmed oven dried out paper-thin cross-sections of pear and apple until they became like crispy botanical drawings. So I winged it and it worked first time out (see method below). Kale chips won’t substitute for potato chips if that’s what you are hankering for. But they are curiously satisfying in a crispy vegetal way. They’re easy to make and I have friends who DEMAND that I bring them over when I come.
Since the first try, I’ve experimented with flatish Lacinato (Tuscan) kale and the curly kind (I recommend the Lacinato, which dries with more heft, and flavor), and a number of flavorings. Other toughish leafy greens like collards will work too. I’m still checking them out…wondering what Treviso radicchio might yield. So far kale is best. I also tried a Fast Method which produces chips in 25 minutes or so, and actually may be a tad more flavorful if you don’t let them brown.
Rainy days always slow me down and tuck me in, seducing me to perform unnecessary housekeeping chores unimaginable in bright sun. When my ancient, duct-taped, binder of recipes tumbled off the top of the fridge in a splat of disorganization, I remanded it to the top of the clothes dryer. Now, a few drops of rain have induced guilt and curiosity. As Japanese poet Ryokan wrote:
Too lazy to be ambitious,
I let the world take care of itself.
Ten days worth of rice in my bag;
a bundle of twigs by the fireplace.
Why chatter about disillusionment and enlightenment:
Listening to the rain on my roof,
I sit comfortably, with both legs stretched out.
I sift through the pages. Fifty years of recipes slip through my fingers, many handwritten in spindly, old fashioned, cursive handwriting by women who have passed from this earth long ago, leaving behind their grease-spattered, thumbed, much loved meals handed down through generations. read more…
Maria’s Robledo‘s instagram of ramps reminds us that the wild leek that grows throughout the Appalachian and Catsill mountains in spring won’t be around much longer. Like many truly wild foods, they possess mighty powers to fortify the body and lift the spirit. Buy ‘em while you can get them. If they’re in good shape, they’ll keep a couple of weeks in the fridge with their roots in a jar of water, and the whole bunch covered loosely with a plastic bag.
We’re heading to the farmer’s market Saturday morning to get a mess, to braise them with olive oil or bacon or pancetta fat to serve as a side dish or with pasta OR to whip up a huge batch of Ramp Butter, which we’ll eat now on great bread, or throw on peas, asparagus, pasta, eggs, mashed potatoes or… We’ll freeze the rest, rolled into logs and wrapped in plastic wrap, to enjoy for months to come.
If you don’t know about the wild West Virginia ramps festivals, check out our post here. At one many years ago, a ramp-intoxicated friend was inspired to throw a ramp into a bottle of good bourbon. He brought the ramp-infused bourban back the following year. Under the Appalachian stars, we swigged a strange new moonshine that tasted of onion, chocolate, caramel, earth.
The headnote to Dorie Greenspan‘s crazy-simple, unbelievably good ‘M. Jacque’s Armagnac Chicken’ begins “This recipe, une petite merveille (a little marvel), as the French would say...”. The recipe IS une merveille, taking almost no work to make, with the most ordinary of ingredients, yielding spectacular results, as we discovered when cooking dinner for friends the other night. Chicken and vegetables cook at once so you only need serve a salad and a great dessert (We recommend Sally’s chocolate cake.) We only got as far as photographing “the before”, above. All thought taking an “after” fell by the wayside with the heavenly aroma of the finished dish, and very good wine. We found a picture of the finished dish at Bake Away With Me.
The recipe is, very simply, a life essential; have it in your head and you’re covered for life. read more…
Truth be known, I have been composing food right on my kitchen worksurface for many years. As a food writer, I enjoyed the big palate the worksurface offered, perfect for combining elements and creating new combinations, both visual and gustatory. So when I renovated ‘the improvised life’s laboratory kitchen, I chose white Corian for the new worksurface, as much for its pristine whiteness as for cost/value. But all my composing-on-the-surface was done in private for recipes-in-process. I’d never viewed it as a way to serve guests UNTIL I read about caterer Pinch Food Design‘s custom-built Chef’s Table: a borderless, food-safe silicone surface that easily squeegees clean; it’s supported by sawhorses made of crown moulding that emulates the flowing lines of a tablecloth, adding warmth without the need for actual fabric.
At parties, Pinch’s chef’s compose their dishes directly on it, allowing guests to experience the creation of food as performance, “an engaging presentation that brings the kitchen out to the party”. read more…
This weekend when we go to the farmer’s market, we will have Tubetti Pasta with Asparagus, Morels and Fava Beans from Sally’s award-winning cookbook A New Way to Cookin mind. It the perfect spring-into-summer pasta recipe because it lends itself to endless improvisation, depending on what look’s best in the market, or how much energy we have.
It plays on an essential principle of improvisational cooking: most foods harvested in the same season — in this case asparagus, morel mushrooms, and various members of the pea family— have an affinity for one another.
The recipe is built on a basic technique: braising the vegetables in a flavorful fat and a little water, then tossing them together with small tubetti pasta and fresh herbs. If you’re pressed for time, use the essential method as a foundation and use only one or two of the vegetables or whatever else looks good in the market. Or swap out like vegetables: use other firm mushrooms like maitake instead of morels.
Shucking fava beans or peas can be a delight when done with friends, but if you’re pressed for time, frozen peas are a fine stand-in.
For those who want to improvise, here’s the basic approach: read more…
(Video link here.) Mike Breach never knew he was an artist, until he started working as a barrista. He discovered that the foamed milk inspired him to draw in cappucinos and lattes. The way he found his unique expression seems like kismet to us.
If you’d like to try your hand at drawing in milk froth but need a palette to begin with, we find battery-powered milk frothers make an easy way to make a thick foam. Follow Breach’s basic method, pick up a skewar or a toothpick and then…see what happens.
(We’re thinking kids could do it with a rich cup of cocoa….)
Suddenly realizing that Easter is just a couple of days away, we started thinking Easter eggs, the symbol of the day both Christian and pagan. Immediately, photographer Tessa Traeger’s egg series came to mind. All eggs collected from various birds, they provide inspiration for egg decorating from Nature. Witness Livet Hamma’s diy spatter-painted eggs below. Easy-to-do, freeform, and potentially really beautiful (with one caveat*).
If, like us, you have been slow to get your Easter act together, look below for last-minute strategies, recipes and ideas. read more…
I met New York City Baker Katherine Yang at a book party for Canal House Cooks Every Day, one of our favorite cookbooks. Co-author Christopher Hirscheimer described Katherine as having created one of the best chocolate chip cookies EVER: crisp, at once salty and sweet.
Katherine is the creator of Gigi Blue a by-order seriously bakery, where she brings to bear years of experience working for two of America’s great chefs: Daniel Boulud and Thomas Keller. Yikes! Katherine screamed when she heard that we wrote ‘the improvised life’, saying that it is her favorite blog and that she actually hoards posts so she can read a lot at once, similar to what we do with her wondrous cookies….
She took liberties with the usual chocolate chip cooky, shifting the texture, and adding a bit more salt to give them a buttery salty-caramel-ish aspect, a brilliant stroke.
They’d make a lovely Easter dessert or gift, just for the heck of it.
We’d serve them like Anne Disrude, another brilliant cook we know used to: for dessert, she’d read more…
We stumbled on some compelling photo placemats done as a public art project for Atlanta Celebrates Photography: photos printed onto large size paper, perfect IF you have a big color printer. The standard size of a placemat is 12″ x 18″, bigger we can print, although we suppose, we could have them done at Kinko’s.
(Video link here.) The first 20 seconds of this wacky video illustrates an essential tenet of improvisation – especially in cooking: the associations of ideas in your field of vision. Here, a classic breakfast next to a frozen pizza sparks the brilliant idea of a breakfast pizza. For us, it’s lead to the discovery that vanilla bean scrapings are delicious on avocados (with a little sugar), that a chunk of chocolate smeared with peanut butter = a peanut butter cup, that amaretti cookies and creme fraiche make a delightful cake for one; the peanut butter and dulce de leche make a stupendous “truffle” or cake filling; that bacon is a great substitute for some of the butter in a cake; that herb salt makes a great dusting for butter cookings. We’ve also found figs to be divine with salami, sugar to be great on olive-oil brushed toast, among about a million other revelations (many of which are in Sally’s The Improvisational Cook and A New Way to Cook).
All it takes is TRYING out the combos you see before you and seeing if they work.
Starting this evening, The Splendid Table will feature Sally talking to Lynne Rosetto Kasper about the holiday table: how to make makeshift tables and seating for a once-a-year crowd, as well as dandy ways to decorate it. Go to Splendid Table’s site for info on when the show airs in your area, or to download or steam it.
Listen (and watch) are some of Sally’s holiday-helpful Splendid Table guest spots, with recipes:
Some time ago, Michael Druzinsky, an acquaintance of mine who is a composer, emailed his friend Mark Bernstein, who created the idea-mapping softwear Tinderbox, to ask if he’d mind talking to me about his very interesting software. Michael forwarded Mark’s reply: “Sally Schneider’s book, A New Way to Cook, changed my life. I’ve given it to lots of people. I’d be delighted to meet her.” Wow. There is NOTHING like a good unsolicited compliment. Then I discovered that Mark had devoted a blog post to the A New Way to Cook, unsolicited. Mark GOT the book so well, I’ve excerpted his post.
I happened across Sally Schneider’s A New Way to Cookin a chain bookstore one day, just about three years ago. It’s very big and very broad, and The Joy of Cooking is clearly not far from its mind.
But while Joy of Cooking is a vast collection of recipes,A New Way to Cook is trying to explain a much smaller core of ideas, expressed in the form of recipes with variations. We have, for example, a core recipe for “braising small fish” or “rustic fruit tart”, and then examine a host of ingredients that we can add or subtract — and the changes that these additions and subtractions will require. In the fruit tart, for example, we might use apples or pears or strawberries (less water, more flour, add rhubarb) or blueberries (try a little thyme) or raspberries (even frozen — add more flour because they’re wet) or reconstituted dried apricots. It’s all the same idea.
Interior designer Suzanne Shaker recently sent this email:
Sally, I’m craving your cherries in grappa. Would you please post the recipe again, as it is that time of year ..our last year’s supply is just about finished.
I’m making them for gifts as you always do.
A gift that lasts and brings such joy to the table.
I serve them in little green Moroccan glasses from John Derian, that we fill with the cherries and grappa and eat with a small spoon as we sip the syrup ..so comforting.
Suzanne is referring to the Dried Cherries in Red Wine Syrup recipe I devised years ago and published in The Improvisational Cook. (Last year, I gave her a huge jar to thank her for advising me on my apartment renovation.) They can be eaten as-is for a lovely, non-alcoholic,cherries-in-winter treat. Better yet, spike them with grappa, the clear Italian alcohol distilled from grape pressings. Somehow the earthy flavor of grappa marries with the cherries in an extraordinary way. Then they become a perfect, slightly boozy end to a meal, or a sleep-inducing midnight snack.
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in mind. It the perfect spring-into-summer pasta recipe because it lends itself to endless improvisation, depending on what look’s best in the market, or how much energy we have.
s make an easy way to make a thick foam. Follow Breach’s basic method, pick up a skewar or a toothpick and then…see what happens.
, one of our favorite cookbooks. Co-author Christopher Hirscheimer described Katherine as having created one of the best chocolate chip cookies EVER: crisp, at once salty and sweet.
makes for nice big sheets with a ruffled edges where they were pulled off the spiral spine, and white space that invites a drawing, collage, quote or…
and 
