Sassy Radish

Let’s not beat around the bush. Everywhere you look these first few weeks of January, you’re going to see a lot of soup. Because, it’s the New Year – which means a new leaf, new resolutions, new plans. I guess that also means soup? I’m not complaining; soup is one of my favorite things to eat. Let there be soup, I say!

I, for one, don’t have any resolutions this year. Not one. There’s plenty already to keep me busy and I want to focus on things already in motion: a wedding this summer, a book in the making, and something else I can hopefully tell you soon about (and no, it’s not a baby). But it’s very, very good, I promise.

Continue reading parsnip leek soup.

It’s the day before Christmas, which means, in our household, that I’m playing Christmas music, minus the actual Christmas celebration. But it’s still Hannukah, which means we get to combine our love of fried foods with the annual tradition of Chinese food. But more on that later. I’ve something up my sleeve for you tomorrow.

Today I want to talk to you about pasta.

Continue reading creamy mushrooms with pasta.

Hello, friends! It’s been while.

Sorry for the long silence. I’ve been meaning to write for quite some time. I had plans to post a week ago, in fact, while I was in LA for the IFBC Santa Monica conference. But that was the day I felt like the death was coming over me and I wound up sleeping all day in the hotel.

Continue reading quinoa with brussels sprouts and pumpkin.

You might have heard we had a snowstorm here in the Northeast. Actually that storm came to us from the west where it fell upon Denver, among other places. It’s not so unusual for Denver to get snow this time of year. But it is highly unusual for New York City to have pre-Halloween snow. Snow that sticks and accumulates. We’re not used to it here in the Northeast.

Andrew and I braved the weather and went out in the morning for brunch. After nine days of being apart, we wanted to spend some time together so we braved the weather – the storm wasn’t due for hours. We walked over to the Clover Club, our favorite neighborhood spot for brunch, weaving and bobbing between the streets, and ordered our food: both of us were craving lamb burgers. I so rarely order meat these days, I get so excited when I’m craving it. And believe me, that lamb burger was the best thing I ate that day. It hit the spot, that’s for sure.

Continue reading butternut squash and pear soup with garam masala.

I am not sure that I can do this particular post justice –I’m not good with adulation. That is I’m good at feeling it, but I’m terrible at putting it in words. On paper.

For months now, I’ve been running around telling people to buy Melissa Clark’s new book, Cook This Now. And I always preface it with, “Yes, I know I work for her, and I might seem biased, but, really, trust me – you’re going to want to cook from it all the time.” And then I get the warm smile, “Yeah, we know and love Melissa Clark, but you are kind of biased. You can’t not like her book.” True, I can’t. But not because of you might think.

Continue reading stir-fried chicken with scallions and oyster mushrooms.

Hi friends, it’s been awhile. I’ve miss you and I’ve missed this little space here. To say that life has taken a turn for the busiest would be an understatement. I don’t have ten seconds to myself. What I have been doing, however, is noting some funny things around me lately. Either I’ve grown more observant with the change of seasons, or the universe has grown stranger. Allow me to share.

The other day, as I was walking on my way to Andrew Scrivani’s for a day of cooking and shooting, something I do every Thursday, a dog passed me by and walked into a laundromat called “Klean and Kleaner”. I could say “wandered”, but that would imply an aimlessness; and the manner in which he entered the space was so purposeful and decisive, I couldn’t help but wonder if he was doing laundry and needed to switch it from the washer to the dryer. And then I thought to myself, “Is his doing his laundry or his owners?” I guess I’ll never know. But I have been contemplating the strange name of the shop – it is Klean or is it Kleaner? Or is it just like Alice in Wonderland – curiouser and curiouser?

Continue reading turkey sausage and mushroom ragu.

This might be the worst week to be posting a recipe. From where I sit in the living room, I look over to the kitchen – a kitchen I’ll approach only tonight to make an easy weeknight dinner. We’ll feast on shrimp and roasted broccoli night per Andrew’s request. It’s a regular in our house.

Normally, my way of dealing with deadlines is to do a deep dive into the work and disappear in it all together. Sometimes I find myself at two o’clock in the afternoon still wearing my pajamas while typing furiously. The look of me, yet-to-shower, hair in a messy bun, glasses on the tip of my nose – is definitely not bringing sexy back, that’s for sure. But I get work done and by the time Andrew gets home – I somewhat try to pull it together, and by that I mean, yoga pants are my best friend right now.

Continue reading challah.

I have now, for many years, been searching for the perfect Rosh Hashanah cake: something not overly sweet, something, perhaps, featuring apples, something festive enough for a crowd but simple enough for a quiet breakfast the following morning. And while searching for the perfect apple cake didn’t sound like much of a challenge, I can assure you that it was. My family didn’t have a traditional apple cake for the holiday – I was on my own on this one.

In my seemingly endless search, I became the Goldilocks of Rosh Hashanah cakes. This one was too sweet; that one – not sweet enough; the third – too dense. I experimented with a few, got some favorable results, but nothing struck me as the cake that I want to serve at the end of a Rosh Hashanah meal or for the holiday brunch. I wasn’t in love.

Continue reading applesauce cake with caramel glaze.

Depending on who you talk to, tomatoes are either gone already, will be gone tomorrow, next week, or by the end of September. That gives me little comfort. For one, if you love tomatoes as much as I do, you’re paralyzed with fear every time you go to the farmers’ market. Will some tomatoes remain, or will they be gone for good? It’s unfair that for a crop this glorious, this celebrated, we’re given but a few weeks’ time to truly make good use of it.

So far, I’ve been in luck. Ripe Romas, tiny grape and cherry tomatoes, heirlooms of all shapes and sizes have greeted me at farm stands. I know I’m on borrowed time, so each market trip, I lug home as many tomatoes as I can – our entire dining room table is covered with them. You might wonder where we eat dinner – well, so do we. And sadly, ripe market tomatoes have a limited shelf life – heavy, with delicate skin, some crack or bruise while en route home.

Continue reading tomato jam.

Oddly enough, one of my favorite things to do in the kitchen is to temper eggs and make egg custards. Funny, how something that made me anxious just few years back is now a favorite activity in the kitchen. My fear caused me to resist egg custard-based recipes for years, until I finally bit the bullet, gave it a try, and found that it’s really not so terrible or difficult.

Tempering isn’t exactly rocket science, but it is slow, measured, deliberate, patient. So if drizzling hot cream while whisking it into eggs makes you crazy just thinking about it, tempering might not be that enjoyable to you. I, on the other hand, find it meditative, much like focusing on your breath in yoga. Tempering requires that you make fast friends with your custard, one trickle of hot cream at a time, turning eggs into a lush, golden-hued, velvety fluid.

Continue reading peach ice cream with sour cream and black pepper.