Sassy Radish

As most people’s thoughts turn to Thanksgiving (now that the election is over – we voted; did you?), I’m about to say something unpopular: I’m a little tired of traditional cranberry sauce. This might sound strange coming from someone who stuffs cranberries into snacking cakes and tucks them into banana bread. It’s not the cranberries themselves—it’s cooking them that I am objecting to.

Something changed about my palate this year. For one, I can’t get enough Spanish food (and in fact, I think about it all the time). We’ve a neighborhood restaurant that makes tapas-style Spanish dishes with Moroccan and Jewish influences and I might as well carve my name in one of their seats, I’m there so often.

Continue reading fresh cranberry relish.

How did I get from reading someone’s personal blog to making a mushroom tart from her recently-released cookbook? Well, it’s a journey spanning slightly less than a decade. Yes, it’s been that long.

I remember a friend of mine, some time ago, telling me about this blog called Smitten. “Go,” she said, “The writing is hilarious, and I think you’ll love it.” I did and she was right—the writing was punchy and pithy, and its author not only made me laugh, but recognize my own erratic life in the big city. The blog was written by Deb Rothberg, a twenty-something, and the topics ranged from suffering through horrible dates to drinking bourbon on a cold wintry night. Being eerily familiar with the former, and quite enjoying the latter, Deb Rothberg was my kind of lady.

Continue reading mushroom tart.

A couple of weeks ago, while picking up a coffee at an East Village cafe, the Bluebird Coffee Shop, I ate the best almond cake of my life. The experience was so monumental, that I couldn’t stop talking about this amazing cake. I talked about it to anyone who’d listen, I’d use superlative adjectives, I’d gesticulate wildly. You’d be surprised by just how few people want to hear about the “best almond cake” they’ll ever have. Kind of blew my mind.

I became besotted with this almond cake so much, that I did something I’ve never before in my food blogging and writing career have done—I gathered enough courage to ask the café, outright, for the recipe. And lo!—they gave it to me!

Continue reading almond cake.

I’m not sure if starting with this: “I made cheese crackers that taste just like the ones from a box!” works effectively as a selling point. But I mean that in the best possible way. Sometimes, I get an itch to recreate my favorite manufactured snacks at home. Usually, they come out better and more revelatory than the store-bought varieties. Marshmallows, for instance, become light and ethereal instead of dense and gummy.

Continue reading homemade cheese crackers.

This is not what I’d call a great picture of apple butter. Far from it. I hope you can forgive me – I’m a little pressed for time these days.

I’ve got about six whole meals to make and freeze this weekend. There’ll be veal ricotta meatballs (thank you, Marco Canora!), tamarind turkey meatballs (recipe soon!), a three-bean stew, some chili, chana masala, tomato sauce with onion and butter, and slow-cooked chicken soup. All will be made and frozen for early to mid-October.

Why October? Well, on October 2, I’m getting surgery on my wrist to remove a benign (but extremely painful) ganglion cyst, and won’t be able to cook for a couple of weeks. It’ll be interesting to type one-handed too. Who knows, maybe while wearing a cast, I’ll learn a few one-handed dishes while in the kitchen. If that happens, you’ll be the first ones to know about them—it’s a useful thing to know how to do. I refuse to surrender to the lure (and ease) of take-out as our only dinner option—I want to see if it can be easily done, and if so, maybe it’ll be helpful to someone reading this blog who might be anticipating surgery or a period of time when they won’t be able to cook. And, truthfully, after a hot, sticky summer when I lived on salads and smoothies, I’m itching to put my slow-cooker back to work. So while it would probably work in my favor to offer you more enticing pictures, I’m winging it this time.

Continue reading apple butter with rum burnt sugar sauce and vanilla.

I think that many things have been said about this tomato sauce that it feels almost redundant to jump in at this point. Enough praises have been sung*.

But as I was thinking about this sauce and why it’s so great, and why it’s just so great to make your own tomato sauce for dinner rather than reach for a jar of it, it got me thinking about the technique of making a proper tomato sauce. The tomato sauce is a simple, humble thing, and yet it too has a few rules that need to be followed in order to wind up with a sauce that will take your breath away each and every time. The most important one is to cook your tomato sauce uncovered.

Continue reading tomato sauce with onion and butter + tomato sauce techniques.