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…
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…
(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.
Kate Payne over at The Hip Girls Guide to Homemaking is giving away a copy of Sally’s award-winning cookbook The Improvisational Cook,plus a bunch of other goodies at one fell swoop. To enter, visit Hip Girls’ giveaway page, scroll to the bottom and fill out the form, RIGHT AWAY. The contest ends Wednesday (tomorrow) December 12, at midnight CST.
Tomorrow, December 5th, at midnight is the absolute final deadline for entering our giveaway of the great Canal House Cooks Every Day, Christopher Hirscheimer and Melissa Hamilton’s inspiring, user-friendly cookbook. It’s a beaut, a cookbook definitely to have and definitely to give.
Since we first got our copy of Christopher Hirscheimer and Melissa Hamilton’s Canal House Cooks Every Day, we’ve been inspired by its simple, straightforward, delicious and REAL recipes (we made their dry-brined roast turkey for Thanksgiving.) Right now, their Apple Tart recipe (below) is calling us.
For the past couple of days, we’ve been getting calls from friends asking for recommendations for the Thanksgiving meal: the best way to cook the turkey, what side dishes, what to drink. So for all our readers who may still be at odds with what they are going to make tomorrow, here’s our round-up of favorite Thanksgiving recipes (which, taken together, make a perfect menu). And since we view recipes as rough formulas and idea generators, we encourage your to take them in whatever direction you want. read more…
With Thanksgiving soon upon us, the debate about whether to brine or not-to-brine the turkey before roasting rages on. We’ve long been a fan of brining, having found it the foolproof method for insuring a moist, well-seasoned bird. Until recently, when two things made us question our belief.
Yesterday, on Serious Eats’ Food Lab we read a very long post documenting the wonderfully-obsessive J. Kenji López-Alt exploring and testing our brining works like a scientist. AND in Canal House Cooks Every Day, the swell prize in our current book giveaway, we read Christopher Hirscheimer and Melissa Hamilton’s use of the dry-brine technique — simply salting the bird 3 days ahead — pioneered by chef Judy Rogers in her great Zuni Cafe Cookbook.
We trust Christopher and Melissa’s sensibility SO much that we’re publishing the recipe below. read more…
Just about everyone we know is beside themselves with anxiety about this election (we find ourselves checking Nate Silver’s 538 polling blog compulsively for comfort). On the eve of the election, we offer our ‘improvised life’ survival guide: cocktails and easy-to-whip-up treats to help assauge anxiety no matter which candidate you favor.
The first order of business are alcoholic beverages. Wine-Spirits-Food writer Josh Eisen suggested a cocktail based based on the most American of spirits: bourbon and/or rye whiskies (Rye is especially fitting because, eons ago, early Ohio’ns — that BIG swing state — unable to grow wheat, grew rye instead…and of course, made whisky from it.) Josh found a simple formula for a Manhattan in Jim Meehan’s The PDT Cocktail Book: The Complete Bartender’s Guide from the Celebrated Speakeasy: read more…
Lush, fragrant summer strawberries are in their last week or two at farm stands. We bought some home and were inspired to serve them in the giant horn spoon Maria Robledo had given us, for an unexpected presentation. We ate them right off the stems, no powdered sugar necessary. It reminded us that there are all kinds of charming and unexpected vessels you could use for serving summer berries. We imagined an our collection of big odd serving spoons filled with berries and arrayed on the table.
If you decide to remove the hulls before serving the berries or cooking with them, don’t throw them away: they can make a great instant flavoring for balsamic vinegar. read more…
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.
and 
, Christopher Hirscheimer and Melissa Hamilton’s inspiring, user-friendly cookbook. It’s a beaut, a cookbook definitely to have and definitely to give.
: 
