recipes
I started viewing coriander seed as Instant Flavor Enhancer one day when I was testing a recipe and had a lot of cracked coriander left over. I tasted it on whatever came to mind to discover its slightly lemony-orange peel-herbal flavor and bit of crackle is wonderful on all sorts of foods, sprinkled on before serving, like pepper. It provides the perfect little alt-note on everything from smoked salmon to rice pudding to a cracker spread with crunchy peanut butter). My all-time favorite is on crushed new potatoes with crème fraiche and chives. (See the list and recipe farther down)
I was snooping around the internet hoping to find a coriander photo when I stumbled on this image and the big idea behind it: read more…
10.01.09 |
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in eating, food, housewares, recipes, repurpose, strategies |
Sally Schneider
At the end of an impromtu dinner party, my friend Josh served a chocolate cake with herbes-of-Provence salt his wife Ellen had made. To accompany it, he had whipped some extraordinary bio-dynamic cream from a farmer friend, and I popped a spoonful in my mouth, sans cake, to savor it. Perhaps it was the bowl of sea salt in my sight lines, or the conversation we’d had earlier about using an herb salt instead of regular salt in the cake that gave me the idea: I sprinkled a few grains of salt onto another spoonful of the whipped cream. And there, in an instant, was a completely “other” notion of whipped cream; the salt brought out the cream’s sweetness and nuance, without being salty, a perfect counterpoint to the rich cake. It was a revelation, and one that I’d use with future desserts.
Throughout my cooking life, this kind of fortuitous collision of two or three unexpected elements has often occurred often in the kitchen and at table. read more…
09.24.09 |
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in food, recipes, strategies, why not? |
Getty Images
One of the most pleasurable parts of cooking is the Eureka Moment, when an idea comes to mind unexpectedly that opens a clear path of discovery. The other night, a sudden brain-flash lead to discovery of a milkshake flavored with Amontillado sherry, a grown-up flavor to be sure, that in a milkshake makes an unbelievably satisfying dessert. It is so delicious and surprising, you could serve it at a dinner party (forget classic milkshake glasses – any cool glass will do). And it is something you could rely upon when your spirits need lifting. Fabulous Amontillado is not necessary; I use the stuff I keep around for cooking (barely decent enough to drink is the rule). Mixed into the shake, its flaws miraculously disappear.
The idea did not come out of the blue, rather was the product of several experiences that worked their way around my mind and memory until they evolved into the milkshake. Here’s the path, for those interested in how some recipes come to be (along with the recipe): read more…
09.10.09 |
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in family + friends, food, recipes |
Introduction a La Flore des Environs de Paris
Corn on the cob is about the most perfect thing to eat on Labor Day weekend. Still, this simple surprising puree made with fresh kernels cut off the cob is a fine rival. A small amount of heavy cream and grated Parmigiano bind with the milky corn juices to achieve the texture of an ethereal polenta with a very pure, concentrated corn flavor. It is pure comfort food, summer-style. I have been known to eat it as a meal on evenings alone, made with 1 or 2 stray ears from a corn-on-the-cob feast. read more…
09.03.09 |
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Sally Schneider
If there was ever a tea for an improvised life, it is verbena. Although it suits many purposes and moods, it is especially good for emergencies, when the shit is hitting the fan. When a friend calls in anguish or needing support from some trauma, I make verbena tea, or throw some dried verbena in a plastic bag to take with me and make tea on site; it’s famously calming.
It’s also great for less dramatic occasions, to serve after a dinner party, say, when you need something delicious and surprising for folks who don’t drink coffee. When you’re desperate for a house gift to take to someone you’re visiting, package up some dried verbena in a cello-bag or a canning jar, and get points for bringing something charming and real. Verbena is a useful flavoring in the kitchen, and be steeped into custard sauces, used to flavor jello and dessert syrups, or used sparingly to scent fish en papillote.
Drying fresh verbena could not be easier and is much cheaper than buying it from a good tea store like Takashimaya. The next couple of weeks is the time to do it read more…
08.29.09 |
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in family + friends, food, gifts, how-to, recipes, strategies |
Ellen Silverman
This summer, the field tomatoes that are the season’s perfect pleasure will be rare and expensive, due to the terrible blight that is causing enormous losses on farms across the Northeast. My advice, for the tomatoes you are lucky enough to find, is that they are best savored with little adornment – just enough to maximize the experience of ripe summer tomato. The gist: Every tomato needs a little bit of salt to make its flavor vivid. If you like, drizzle over excellent extra-virgin olive oil…maybe a drop or two of Sherry or balsamic vinegar…and/or a few torn basil leaves.
The best manifestation of this formula is the tomato salad recipe of Lucia Lo Presti, wine writer Anthony Giglio’s Sicilian mama-on-law. Its lushness that will make you feel intoxicated. read more…
08.14.09 |
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in family + friends, food, recipes, strategies |
Ruth Fankushen Kunkel wrote An Alien Robot’s Cookbook for her boys who were picky eaters; she needed to find a way to engage them in eating and making wonderful food. It begins:
”Due to a random mechanical error, I traveled to Earth without warning…I finally
crash-landed in a North American backyard. ”
So it was the Alien Robot Model #4U82 came to write a cookbook as a gift for an Earth boy named Eddie.
The book has the friendly feel of a homemade cookbook made by a thoughtful mom to engage her young kids in the kitchen. (Why not make a cookbook for or with your kids?) read more…
08.11.09 |
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in family + friends, food, kids, projects + play, recipes |
Bon Appetit
When I opened the little tin of Pimenton de la Vera, the aroma of sun-dried peppers, smoked-over-smoldering-oak-fires hit me full in the face. The pungent, vividly-colored spice from Andalucia that is the essential flavor in chorizo, triggered all sorts of associations and “what if’s”:
“What if I sprinkled some on warm smashed hard-boiled eggs, or a fried egg?…
…What if I rubbed a fat pork chop with it, along with salt and pepper?…
…Or stirred it into pasta sauce?…
…Or marinated a goat cheese or some Manchego in olive oil and pimenton?…
…or roasted almonds with a dusting of it….
…Or sprinkled on a grilled cheese sandwich…or macaroni an cheese” Mac-and-cheese!
I tried out all these ideas and more as the pimenton became my new favorite taste: a bit of smoke and earth. read more…
08.06.09 |
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Maria Robledo
When her spirits were flagging, or she just needed a little vacation from everyday life, my mother would take me to a Greek restaurant near the theatre district in New York City. We would always order a rustic dish that is a classic in Greek cuisine: cold sliced beets with a garlic sauce known as Skordalia. It is an extraordinarily satisfying and somehow heartening dish. The beets, which taste at once sweet and fruity and slightly of earth, are a perfect foil for the mellow garlic sauce: a creamy base of mashed potatoes beaten with lots of olive oil and vigorously flavored with fresh garlic (an earthier version of egg-yolk based garlic sauces beloved in all Mediterranean countries). It was an early, enduring lesson about the ability of food to transform my view of things, and make me feel like a million bucks. read more…
07.31.09 |
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Maria Robledo
One of the best things about encouraging people to improvise in the kitchen is to hear how they monkeyed with one of my recipes.“Wow”, I think, “I never thought of that!” Like my friend Ellen using an herb sea salt, fragrant with dried rosemary, thyme and lavender, instead of kosher salt in a chocolate cake recipe she’d found in one of my books. Ellen said she was about to add the salt to the batter when she saw the package of herb salt on the counter. She ground the coarse gray sea salt with dried herbs in a mortar and threw in a tad more than the recipe called for (to account for the herbs). The cake was a big hit and now has become HER chocolate cake recipe, with roots going back decades. read more…
07.23.09 |
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My personal Breakfast of Champions is a fried egg on a handful of raw greens – say arugula, dandelion, baby spinach, watercress or even mesclun – lightly dressed with extra-virgin olive oil and a few drops of sherry vinegar, salt and pepper, maybe some snipped chives. It is a play on a classic rustic Italian dish: steamed asparagus with a fried egg and some grated Parmigiano. The operating principle is that when you break the soft-cooked yolk, it spills onto the vegetable like a sauce; vegetable and protein, marry, with little fuss, in a single delicious dish.
I love that idea so much that I tried putting a fried egg on all manner of cooked vegetables read more…
07.13.09 |
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Sally Schneider
Laziness and exhaustion are the motivations behind many of my culinary improvisations; the desperate need to make something good as quickly as possible causes me flaunt notions I’d previously held sacred. In past cherry seasons, for example, I’d painstakingly pit pounds of cherries to make a warm stew to spill onto vanilla ice cream or crème fraiche for me and my friends. It’s akin to the inside of a cherry pie, and is magic because it is rare: few people seem to remember that fresh cherries are divine cooked quickly in a saucepan with sugar and a squeeze of lemon, and fewer are willing to pit them.
Then the other evening, I arrived late for an impromptu collaborative dinner with friends, bearing fresh cherries for our dessert. read more…
07.03.09 |
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in family + friends, food, recipes, strategies, why not? |
Ellen Silverman
I use rocks a lot in my kitchen. I haul particularly good ones home when I find them at the beach or in the country knowing that, at the very least, I’ll enjoy looking at them and for sure, at some point, they’ll present an impromptu solution to something I’ve set my mind on. For example, I panfry whole, butterflied chicken and other birds “al mattone”, (Italian for “under a brick,”) using a big white rock I shlepped home from Shelter Island as a weight to keep the bird pressed flat against the pan. read more…
05.16.09 |
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Ellen Silverman
When in a weakened state from anxiety, an impending cold or working too hard, I take solace in butter. I stand at the kitchen counter and eat shavings of cold butter on toast, or even crackers, with a few grains of sea salt. Good butter is like a perfect cheese to me but better at these moments: purer, simpler, direct and voluptuous. read more…
03.30.09 |
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