Sassy Radish

Parsnips will never win a beauty prize. They’ll never even place runner-up. And sadly, all too often they get passed up for a prettier-looking vegetable. Root vegetables have it rough, I tell ya.

Even Andrew wrinkled his nose in disappointment after finding out that I was planning on roasting parsnips for supper. “Wasn’t there anything else at the farmers’ market,” he grumbled.

Well, actually, no there wasn’t much more at my local market a few weeks ago, nor has the situation improved much last week. Which is why I kicked off my bimonthly “The Farm Stand” column over at Prospect Heights Patch, with something as homely and humble as a parsnip.

Continue reading roasted parsnips.

I’m worried that by writing about pelmeni, the famed Russian meat-filled dumplings with a cult following, I might inadvertently open the Pelmeni Pandora’s box and pandemonium will ensue. This is a dish that elicits passionate responses as there are just as many different persuasions on how to make pelmeni and how to eat them as there are Russians, probably more. And while the gist might be the same, the nuances, the proportions – will vary vastly. Whether or not you put garlic in your filling can become a central argument point of the evening. And believe me, it’ll turn into a very long evening, indeed. As far as my personal experience goes, every Russian family I’ve ever met (and I’ve met many given my background) equipped with a recipe will lay claims to making not only the best pelmeni, but also the most authentic. Authenticity is huge with Russians. The number of times I’ve heard at a dinner table, “That’s not a real [],” – I’ve officially lost count. To prevent another heated debate, I’d like to tell you, right off the bat, that this is just my family’s version. And, as expected, I like my version the best. But that’s entirely a matter of opinion.

If given the opportunity, I could wax poetic about pelmeni – I’d like to write it little haikus about how delicious they are, how they make a night of no-time-cook-dinner into a veritable feast. But then I’d be writing poems and totally forget to give you the recipe. So you’d be looking at pictures of pelmeni and how to make them without actually know how to bring this bounty to your own table.

Continue reading pelmeni.

I realize that rice pudding isn’t about to win the sexiest dessert award anytime soon. It’s dull in color, lumpy in texture, and offers no enticing shape. It’s a lump of gooey rice sitting in your bowl quietly awaiting its fate. If there was a pageant for dessert, rice pudding would lose the swimsuit and the evening gown sections of the competition. It doesn’t sparkle or wow with its looks.

But it would nail the questions category, and when asked what issue is important to its cause, the rice pudding would surely rise to the occasion. It is, without question, my favorite winter dessert, snack, comfort treat. I eat it warm after dinner, with the steam rising from the bowl; I sneak spoonfuls of it at night, cold, straight from the fridge; I could build a lunch around it with some sliced pears and bananas and a steaming cup of Ceylon tea. I could easily write odes to rice pudding, and I might as well have done so just now.
Continue reading rice pudding with coconut milk.

Were I not so bleary-eyed yesterday, I might be able to express my glee with this salad. But I slept poorly, woke up early, and skipped my morning coffee and sat at my desk all day without so much as a drop of caffeine. This morning treated me to a migraine and I decided to work from home where I can be in a dark and quiet room. But this salad is a revelation, and it’s going to be on regular rotation this winter. I’ve already made it three times in the span of ten days. I would have made more, but I ran out of lacinato kale. Not to worry, more is coming this week and I plan on making loads more of this come Thursday night for our book club dinner, which I’m hosting this time. But as for you, you must make it as soon as you possibly can. It’s not at all time-consuming and you’ll be amazed that you might start craving a salad this time of year. I can’t implore you enough – go now!

Right around this time of year, I face the perennial problem of how to eat more greens while most everything I see at the farmers’ market is brown-colored. I think because it’s been so bitterly cold outside (six degrees out yesterday morning!) I’m turned off by traditional salads with crunchy lettuce and the usual out-of-season salad accouterments – the last thing I want on my place is a cold salad. I want a green that’s chewy, almost meaty, that has a strong, nutty bite and a toothsome quality. Give me something I can sink my teeth into!

Continue reading tuscan kale salad with pecorino.

Maybe I got a little ahead of myself. I had intended for us to be fully unpacked and settled in five days. I thought, if we apply ourselves, we can get it all done in no time, like magic. But settling into a place doesn’t work that way. For one, you discover you need things. Things like shelves and shelf dividers and wall-mounting hooks. Things that help you organize, and if anyone from the Container Store executive team is reading this, we could really use one of your stores in our hood. Of course, the downside to that would mean that I would never, and I mean never, leave it – and Andrew have to explain to people that his girlfriend got lost somewhere between the Elfa shelving units and the kitchen stackables. It would be a sad tale of love and loss. I’d quickly become a cautionary tale, or an urban legend – or both!

Secondly, in the process of unpacking, you discover that there are things you no longer need, things you want to give away, things you want to sell. And so these things, until you find a proper place for them, sit in the middle of you living room/bedroom/hallway shamelessly staring at you as if to say, “You, you who no longer wants me, how could you do this to me? How could you just discard me?” Such is the state of things at the apartment.

Continue reading cauliflower soup with parmesan and harissa.

Wow. You guys are, just… well… wow! I don’t know what to say except for a heartfelt “Thank You!!” I didn’t expect this much support and of such caliber. In those moments when I get a little scared and doubtful, I just go and reread your comments and emails. Thank you for being so supportive and encouraging. It means more than I can put into words, which is a funny way to be for someone who relies on language so much. All I can say is that you make this little wee space here very much worth while. You make it what it is. And I am so so grateful each and everyday. To you. For you. I am so excited to be taking this plunge, and, in a way, taking you on this journey with me. It’ll be fun, I think. We can revel in the good, and find humor in the bad, and hopefully in the end, it all will fall into its proper place.

I wanted to post this tomorrow. To write today and take some time to edit, but if you’re in the New York area, or anywhere where it’s cold and snowy, this will come in handy tonight. It’s my way of thanking you for being so wonderful and lovely. So if you see any typos here, please forgive me. Because it’s snowing and I feel like snow is the perfect kind of stew weather, I want to give you this today. I’d give anything right now to be tucked away at home making this stew. It makes the house smell simply amazing and it’s the kind of thing that is perfect ladled over buttery egg noodles. My favorite part is when you’ve eaten all the meat and what remains is the sauce and the noodles, kind of like in a soup. I eat the noodles with a spoon, and, if I’m eating alone, always slurp the noodles – somehow, it makes eating them so much more satisfying. At the moment, however, I’m sitting in a windowless office, staring at a window all the way across the hall, mesmerized by the softly falling snow, wishing I was cooking in my kitchen. Soon, my friends, soon.

Continue reading beef stew with carrots.

How did you ring in the New Year? Was it calm and quiet with you and just a few friends or your significant other? Or was it decadent and festive, a Manhattan in one hand and a caviar blini in the other? Me – I chopped off a piece of my finger while making lasagna, and were it not for Andrew stepping in and making the lasagna by himself (with me looking on), we would have shown up to our friends’ party one dish short. It all worked out in the end, trauma aside, even though I now type with nine fingers, while the injured digit rests all bandaged up. It really isn’t so horrible (I’m such a drama queen), but being that it’s my worst cooking injury to date, naturally I’m a little unnerved by it.

So coming off of a busy December, we plunge head on into a full January. 2011, I expect great things of you! There are changes abound, all of them good, but I’m because I’m a creature of habit, because I don’t seek out change on my own (a haircut, or new nail polish doesn’t count) I am, a tiny bit, laced with fear. In the last month since I hinted at some news, I got many emails guessing what these news might be. Suffice to say, they ran the gamut of typical things people “announce”. Well, I’ve kept you wondering long enough. So here goes.

Continue reading rutabaga mash.

It doesn’t cease to amaze me that while I am never late for dinner, an appointment, or even a party (fashionably late, what?), I can’t for the life of me meet my own deadlines. There’s a lemon tart that I’ve got for you in the next few weeks that was made nearly a year ago, but because I had missed the citrus season was tucked away for the year, leaving me with pangs of guilt. It’s coming, I promise, sometime mid-January. And while I also promise to throw some less waist-challenging fare your way, I firmly believe in indulging, if only a little, around the calendar. I will also try not to be tardy on my own blog. That, perhaps, might be my only New Year’s resolution.

While offering cookies after Christmas is a little bit like responding to a party invite a day after the party took place and promising to make something for it, I’m going to stick my neck out and tell you about these cookies after all. They’re good, very good indeed, and if you are looking for something festive-looking to usher in the New Year, look no further. They’re as sophisticated as cookies get, dressed up in black and white, toothsome, laced with white pepper. They are an adult, black-tie version of the Oreo, an Oreo that at the same time, kind of wants to be a whoopie pie. It’s made for a decadent feast, but then again, who’s ever wanted to have a humble New Year’s party?

Continue reading salt & pepper cookies.

Come Wednesday, Andrew and I are heading back to Boston’s North Shore where we’ll be visiting our families. Our towns are the kind of historic New England towns where the houses are often brandishing signs of the year they were built, the glass in the windows is always thicker at the bottom suggesting a notable age, and the entryway doors are lower and shorter hearkening back to the time when people were simply of a more modest height. We are neighbors to Salem, with its rich and dark history of persecutions, Puritans and propriety. Halloween is a real hoot there, by the way. And nearby is a little town named Marblehead. It’s a coastal town, small, beautiful, quaint. It delivers brutal winds in the winter and a much-needed breeze in the summer off the Atlantic. Sometimes you can spot a lobster or two sunning themselves in the shallow water. Marblehead, like Salem, is also rich in history, and its early sailors are considered the forerunners of the American Navy. It is also a town rich in fishing and fishermen. This cookie here belongs to them.

It’s not often that a cookie hails from the same place as you. And when you find out that it does, you pay attention and take notice. Especially when this cookie comes with a history and a story. On the outside, the cookie looks humble. It is, as you can see, brown and outside of a few sparkly granules of sugar decorating its top – it is a cookie unadorned. And it kind of likes it that way. It’s a cookie that doesn’t boast, isn’t in your face, and just quietly goes about its business with resolve and persistence.

Continue reading ginger rum molasses cookies – joe froggers.

Alas, we have arrived to the season of the cookie, perhaps the most inspired of all seasons because, let’s be honest, who doesn’t love a good cookie? It’s cold outside (and if you’ve been living on the East Coast, ooooh-weee did it get cold, or did it get cold?), you’ve got a cup of tea by your side, and you can’t be expected to have your tea solo, now can you? No, your tea deserves a companion, a partner in crime (if eating cookies is indeed a crime), and nothing accompanies a hot tea better than a simple, humble butter cookie. Also, few things make a better homemade gift around this time of year. Certainly, from the looks of it the butter cookie might come across as too unambitious a player in the Christmas cookie assortment, but it is precisely because it’s so unassuming and straight-forward, that it is the most versatile. Add a bit of lemon zest to it, and I’m a goner.

I should probably confess first that the butter cookie, the sablé, is my favorite type of cookie in the world. Throw a macaron in my direction and I’ll gladly, and gratefully, eat it. But give me a butter cookie, a tender, melt-in-your-mouth rich morsel of the perfect marriage of butter, sugar, and eggs, and I will be yours forever. It’s that easy. And no, while Andrew didn’t woo me with sablés, he sure appreciates a good cookie when he sees one. And this cookie that I got for you today is that cookie. It is perfection embodied and it comes in such a delightfully small size, that you could have a couple and not feel like you’ve just made a mess of things. One bite and the cookie melts in your mouth.

Continue reading lemon butter cookies.