Sassy Radish

Before I started working professionally (i.e. for a living) as a recipe tester and a kitchen assistant, and began to spend the work day hours making six to eight dishes in quick succession, I didn’t really contemplate why people who were cooking all day long professionally liked to order take-out upon getting home. I remember talking to one private chef and recipe developer, and I asked her what she was making for dinner that night. Her response was succinct – there’s a great Thai place around the corner that makes excellent pad Thai. After being on her feet for eight hours, chopping, sautéing, and cleaning up, she was not about to get home and do it all over again. And until I started cooking all day long myself, I didn’t quite get why. But the simple truth of it is this: after a complete day of cooking, even frying an egg on toast just seems a bit much.

You know what else is hard after being on your feet all day? Everything. It sort of zaps you – intellectually and physically. Your body sort of aches and grows a little heavy as the day wears on. You check yourself in the window on the train ride home and realize you’re a hot mess. Your hair develops a bit of a frizzy halo, your forehead shines like a beacon in the night, there’s some pancake batter in your hair. But you don’t care – you wear your fatigue like a badge of honor. You’ve earned it. And when you get home, you just sort of want to sit on your couch with your feet up and unwind a bit. And you’re so grateful that there’s someone out there who is willing to cook you food and bicycle it over.

Continue reading coconut green curry mussels.

In a few days our household is going to grow by one more. No, there’s no bun in the oven, so to speak – we’re not having a baby. If you start seeing recipes combining peanut butter, pickles and ice cream, you should start to get suspicious, but you can rest easy for now. Our household is temporarily expanding because Andrew’s younger brother, Russ, is coming to live with us while he is studying at the Cooper Union for the summer. One bedroom, an air mattress, and three people. Sounds like a script for a prime time sitcom.

Someone asked me the other day if I was dreading it – adding another person to a small New York one bedroom. I know that many people would be. I know that given my anxiety over clutter and disorder – I should be. But I’m not. I love a full house. I love the extra commotion and the noise that comes with it. While it’s nice to be just the two of us, but with another person it’ll feel like an actual family.

Continue reading frittata with asparagus, cremini, and scallions.

Who was the first brave soul to tackle an artichoke? I ponder this every time nowadays, when I find myself trimming, pulling, and scraping the prickly vegetable. And while I might never find out the daring gourmand who is responsible for this bounty, I am certainly grateful – artichokes are delicious and are totally worth the trouble they give.

I’m a fairly new to making artichokes at home. Like many of you out there, I suspect, I’ve always been intimidated by them. I’d be at the grocery store, holding them in my hand, and then I’d place them back – they didn’t seem all that friendly and looked like a lot of work. Sometimes, when I wasn’t careful, I’d accidentally hook the tip of my finger on one of the sharp leaves. Once or twice, my fingers bled. How many vegetables can you say are actively out to get you? Artichokes were clearly sending a message – do not eat me.

Continue reading carciofi alla romana.

For many of us Memorial Day signifies the official start of Summer. And while our calendars tell us that Summer doesn’t really kick off for another few weeks, in my mind it has already arrived. Strawberries have arrived at the farmers’ market.

I look to strawberries to signal Summer’s approach, and as soon as they appear at the farm stand, I proclaim it to be summer and proceed with all kinds of strawberry shenanigans. Last year they were added to a blueberry pie (technically making it strawberry blueberry pie), were introduced to buttermilk granita, and folded into a dimply buttermilk cake. The year before, they played a leading role in a shortcake production.

Continue reading strawberry basil sorbet.

Poor Caesar salad. For the remainder of Spring and all of Summer it’s filed away, not once remembered. We think of it only when the weather turns on us – cold rain becomes an everyday thing, sweaters and scarves emerge, and we put away iced coffee and leave home clutching our thermal mug full of the hot stuff.

I, for one, lament this unceremonious Caesar salad dismissal. I miss the emulsion of lemon, garlic, Parmesan, anchovy, and olive oil, and could eat it practically every day. I’ve been known to make this slurry and slather it on a thick piece of country bread. It’s so good, so potent, so unapologetically bold – it’s not some small-time vinaigrette, delicately coating your salad leaves.

Continue reading asparagus caesar salad.

These days, if you find yourself at the green market, you’ll hardly remember the cold days that are not-so-long behind us. Gone are the Saturdays when our only options were tubers and root vegetables. Suddenly the market is alive! There is plenty of green, new scents, new stalls. The overwintered leeks, the delicate new salad greens, asparagus, ramps! In no time we will see (and smell!) the first of the strawberries – these will be truly magical weeks when you’ll be tempted to eat your berries before you get home from your weekly trip.

But favorite spring moment at the greenmarket isn’t when I spy the first strawberries of the season, or the first green spears of asparagus. It’s when I find rhubarb, green with hot pink hues, firm and sturdy, piled high. Most people grab a few stalks satisfied with their bounty, but me – I get several pounds at a time, greedily stuffing my bags with the tart fruit.

Continue reading roasted rhubarb with vanilla and rose syrup.

A few weeks ago, I was catching up with my parents on the phone. The conversation went a little bit like this, “So, I just got back from the market and ramps are back in season!”

Silence.

I tried again. “So, like I said, I picked up some eggs and milk and potatoes, and also ramps are back, and I’m going to pickle them, so I’m excited about that.”

My mother spoke up, “What are ramps?” she asked me in Russian. My dad piped in, “Never heard of ramps. How do you say in Russian?”

Continue reading pickled ramps.

Perhaps it’s unfair that I’m writing this mere days after both Passover and Easter have ended. But spring comes late to us this year, after a prolonged winter has delayed spring crops by a few weeks.

For the last few weeks, every time I’ve chatted with the farmers, the consistent complaint has been a late spring harvest. Just last week I spied ramps and asparagus and squealed with delight. I filled my bags to the brim with verdant produce, eager to devour it in the coming days.

Continue reading brisket with rhubarb and honey.

My first ever macaroon was an utter disappointment. Our first Passover in the United States brought to our table a lot of surprises. We could just walk into the supermarket and buy our matzo there. Imagine that! Just like people buy bread and eggs and milk – there it was, in a special isle (its own isle!) with a big bright sign that said “Passover Foods”. We were in shock, amazed that this kind of blatant display was in full view of everyone to see.

Back in St. Petersburg, my family would go to this one particular spot in the city where you could get matzo. We would then transport it back where it would reside in our kitchen, among all the regular food items. No one in Russia cleaned out their kitchen free of “chametz” for the holiday – it just wasn’t a practice back then. Plus, on your way back from the matzo pick-up, you kind of had to be discreet with it. Being Jewish in Russia wasn’t particularly hip and if you were too vocal about it, it was downright dangerous.

Continue reading coconut macaroons.

Of all the dishes of my childhood, none was more loathed than tsimmes. Right around Rosh Hashanah and Passover, this graced our table practically at every meal. But whereas come September, I had many more options food wise, being that it was harvest time and all, come March or April, Russian stores had little to offer and by little I mean sad-looking root vegetables. This is a lot like what the farmers’ market currently has as well, minus the sad-looking part.

For some reason, my hatred of tsimmes inspired my mother, against all odds, to make me love the mushy honeyed carrots. She’d stand over me as I shoved spoonfuls in my mouth, gagging in the process. It was not a pretty sight, but in the spirit of full disclosure I should also add that I was a very picky eater as a kid, so it could’ve just been that tsimmes was the straw that broke the camel’s, or in this case my mothers, back. Or maybe because she was so enamoured of the dish herself, she was hoping that we’d be share our enthusiasm over it. Sadly, that never happened, and I avoided eating and making tsimmes until I hit thirty. Tsimmes was my food arch-nemesis.

Continue reading tsimmes.