Cheese Dishes, Easy to Prepare, Pasta Dishes, Recipes, Salads, Vegetarian Dishes

Orzo Salad with Arugula and Mizithra Cheese

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Orzo is like a dependable friend – versatile, mixes well with others, but distinct and fun on its own.  I’m an out and out fan.  In lieu of the traditional radiatore pasta or bowties for a potluck stunner, why not outstanding orzo?  This particular combination features peppery arugula, sweet tomatoes and salty mizithra cheese all gussied up with a light vinaigrette.  It looks sunnier than Miss America in the Sahara desert.

Mizithra cheese is a rather fun addition – a hard sheep milk cheese made in Greece.  It’s salty like feta, but drier and crumblier – perfect for a lively pasta salad.  If you can’t find mizithra, you can certainly use ricotta salata or feta cheese.  Also, try to use the best olive oil you can get your hands on – when you have a recipe with so few ingredients and little to no cooking, it helps to keep the flavors strong.

Recipe for

Orzo Salad with Arugula and Mizithra Cheese

Ingredients
1 lb. of orzo
2 heirloom tomatoes, diced
3 c. of arugula leaves, loosely chopped
1/2 c. of olive oil
6 oz. of mizithra cheese, crumbled
1/4 tsp. of salt
1/4 tsp. of pepper
4 tbs. of rice wine vinegar
3 tbs. of sliced green onion

Bring a large pot of water to a boil and salt heavily.  Add the orzo to the boiling water and cook according to the package directions.  Drain and cool with running water.  Drain again well and add to a large mixing bowl.  Toss the orzo with the tomatoes, arugula, olive oil, cheese, salt, rice wine vinegar, pepper and green onions.  Chill for at least 20 minutes and then serve.

Easy to Prepare, Lighten Up, Recipes, Salads, Side Dishes, Vegan Dishes, Vegetarian Dishes

Summer Salad of Fingerlings, Heirloom Tomatoes and String Beans

Summertime has always meant trips to the farmer’s market – from the dripingly ripe tomatoes to the sweetest ears of corn, I couldn’t help but swoon over access to ingredients as flavorful and delicious as these.  Despite my dependence on the convenience of grocery stores, shopping at the market was a reminder of the fact that we can all make a commitment to using the freshest ingredients possible.  Summertime meant easy access to the most incredible veggies, and took the focus off of planning before shopping.  You could go with a blank slate and a lack of a menu, and just resign to be inspired by what was available.  It was liberating, really.

This salad is a winner for the spontaneous and the planners alike – during the summer, heirloom tomatoes are readily available and simply begging to be tucked into.  Green beans are crisp and sweet and ready to snap the ends and crunch away.  You can even access buttery heirloom potatoes for use in this salad that come in just about every shade.  The entire salad is held together by a basil vinaigrette that manages to brighten and highlight all of the flavors of the veggies.  It makes a gorgeous potluck and the perfect accompaniment to grilled meats, but it’s nourishing enough as a main course and absolutely vegan.  Like I said before, the perfect summer celebration.

Summer Salad of Fingerlings, Heirloom Tomatoes and String Beans

1 lb. of haricots vert or string beans, snipped of stems
1 lb. of fingerling potatoes
1 c. of heirloom cherry tomatoes, halved (or 1 c. cubed tomatoes)

juice of half a lemon
3 tbs. of red wine vinegar
2 cl. of garlic
1/2 c. of basil leaves
1/4 c. of olive oil
1/2 tsp. of black pepper
1 tsp. of salt

Bring a large pot of water to a boil and salt heavily.  Add the potatoes to the boiling water and cook until tender, about 10 minutes.  Drain with a slotted spoon and cool with running water.  While the water is still boiling, plunk in the haricot verts and blanch for 1 minute.  Drain and cool with running water.  Add chilled potatoes and green beans to a large bowl.  Add the tomatoes to the bowl and set aside.

In a food processor, add the garlic, basil, salt and pepper.  Blitz to mince finely.  Add the lemon and vinegar and blitz again.  While the motor is running, stream in the olive oil.  Turn off the food processor and pour dressing over the vegetables.  Toss and chill for at least 15 minutes.  Serve.

Easy to Prepare, Friends Recipes and Hacks, Recipes, Sauces and Condiments, Vegetarian Dishes

Chef Tim’s Caramelized Onions

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As much as I love techniques that save time and effort, sometimes you have to go for broke and forget all the shortcuts.  When I read Chef Tim Ma’s recipe for his caramelized onions (“carmies” for short), I paused for a beat.  3 to 4 hours?  For real, dude?  Yes, for real.

As I peeled and chopped away, I wondered what the final product would be like given the sheer amount of time expended on the dish.  And as the onions sweated away, the house started to smell good.  And then it smelled better than that.  And then better than that.  And then so good that I began to question why I didn’t cook all onions in this way.

Sandra Lee and Rachel Ray be damned (although I could see that maybe, just maybe, Rachel Ray would cook these babies earnestly on a weekend – maybe that’s a little too much faith in humanity), this recipe is the most perfect exercise in reminding ourselves why we cook at all.  When we give the ingredients we’re working with the exact amount of time that they need to become the epitome of deliciousness, we have the ability to create dishes that excite and delight.  I say all of this with the utmost of sincerity – why would I ever waste time making boo boo when I could make these onions?

Recipe for

Chef Tim’s Caramelized Onions

Ingredients
6 sweet yellow onions, thinly sliced
3 tbs. of butter
1 tbs. of salt
1 tbs. of sugar

Melt butter over medium heat in a large skillet. Add onions and season with salt and sugar.  Reduce heat to as low as possible and cook onions slowly until they become a deep golden brown, stirring occasionally.  You’ll be cooking these guys for about 3-4 hours.

Roast Beef Sandwich with Caramelized Onions

This is barely a recipe, but so delicious it’s well worth listing here. Layer these onions on foccacia with rare roast beef, fresh arugula, horseradish cheddar and mayo, salt and pepper. It’s lovely for the spice, particularly the peppery arugula playing up the sweetness of the onions. Yes!

 

Kitchen Soundtrack

Languishing in the kitchen by myself, I found myself thinking about the incredible movie “The Wackness” and ended up jonesing for some old Mary J (pronounced Murr J) and the song “Reminisce” – the irony is not lost on me.

Friends Recipes and Hacks, Impressive Dishes, Main Courses, Meat Dishes, Poultry Dishes, Recipes

Chef Tim’s Roast Chicken with Chardonnay Sauce, Trumpet Mushroom Duxelle and Fingerling Potatoes

*in Jay-Z voice* “Tim, you did it again.  You’re a genius.”  Not too often when I’m cooking am I reminded of the fine balance between strict adherence to technique and freestyle improvisation in the kitchen.  This recipe is like a dance – you certainly want to follow the rules to coax it into perfection, but there is room for you to do your thang as well.  In essence, it’s everything I love about the kitchen.  And as I watched my husband take the first bite of the final product and nod his head knowingly that this was something of pure majesty, I loved it all the more.

In Chef Tim Ma’s interview for this site, he talks about the importance of organization in the kitchen.  As home cooks, although we don’t go all out with a true mise en place and prep kitchen work, there is something to be said for taking time to lay out all of your ingredients before you launch into the assembly of the dish.  This recipe is a great example of this fact – chopping all of your ingredients first and setting up your kitchen before turning on the stove will allow you the luxury of breezing through this one.  When you are all finished, you take a bite and marvel at the genius your tucking into without feeling as if you slaved at all.

Tim purports that this dish is an excellent use of many important kitchen techniques – I see it as a reminder of how much there is to learn in the kitchen, far beyond what we’ve learned from our families or from puttering around on our own with a bit of trial and error.  Spending the time to figure out how to properly treat ingredients is so very necessary, and though we won’t all have the honor or luxury of attending cooking school, it doesn’t mean we can’t go out of our way with a little self-directed study on proper methods and techniques.  Consider this recipe a solid lesson with Chef Tim as the instructor du jour.

Since we don’t have access to a live demonstration of this one (yet), a trickier part of the recipe is in the deboning of the chicken leg and thigh as one piece.  While you can absolutely have your butcher do this for you, it’s a lot more interesting to grab a sharp knife and try it out for yourself.  I found this old video of Paul Prudhomme doing it, and teacher that I am, I love his level of encouragement offered to newbies trying this for the first time.  Yes, you can do this, and no, it doesn’t matter if you’ve never done it before.  Now, fancy names be damned, go get yourself some roast chicken and mushroom action.

Recipe for

Roast Chicken Leg and Thigh with Chardonnay Sauce, Trumpet Mushroom Duxelle and Fingerling Potatoes

Ingredients
2 trumpet mushrooms, cleaned and sliced
2 tbs. of butter
half of a lemon, juiced
1 shallot, minced
1 oz. of slab bacon or salt pork
1/4 c. of caramelized onions

2 chicken legs and thighs, deboned
2 tbsp dry chardonnay
4 tbsp vegetable or chicken stock
2 tbsp butter
parsley, chopped

1 lb. of fingerling potatoes
duck fat (or vegetable oil if you don’t have any)
salt and pepper

Melt 2 tbs. of butter in a large pan over low heat. Add bacon or salt pork and sweat for a few minutes without giving it color.  Add shallots and sweat without giving color for a few minutes.  Add mushrooms and continue to cook over low heat, adding a pinch of salt, pepper and the lemon juice.  The mushrooms will begin to release water – once the water is completely absorbed, stop cooking.  Add caramelized onions and toss to heat.  Set aside.

Preheat the oven to 400°.  Heat a new pan that can go into the oven over high heat with a little blended oil.  Season chicken with salt and pepper.  Once pan is hot, add chicken legs skin side down and cook over high heat for a minute.  Place entire pan in oven and cook until chicken registers 165°, about 10 minutes.  Take pan out, remove chicken, drain oil.  Deglaze pan with chardonnay, scraping up the brown bits.  Reduce wine by half, add stock and reduce by half again.  Turn fire off, add 2 tbs. of butter and whisk until incorporated.  Place mushroom mix in center of plate, top with chicken, add sauce around, garnish with parsley.

Fingerling Potatoes

To cook the fingerlings, bring a large pot of water to a boil.  Add potatoes and blanch for 3-4 minutes.  Drain and dry well.  Add about 2 inches of oil (or equivalent amount of duck fat) to a heavy bottomed sauce pan and heat until a piece of bread, when dropped into the oil, browns in 3 seconds.  Add the potatoes to the pan, being careful to stand back if the skins sputter a bit.  Allow to cook for a minute, remove and drain on paper towels and salt and pepper immediately while still hot.  If you’d like to time this all so that the potatoes are finished at the same time as the chicken, cook the potatoes as soon as the chicken goes into the oven.

Appetizers and Small Plates, Friends Recipes and Hacks, Meat Dishes, Recipes, Sauces and Condiments

Chef Tim’s Pan Fried Pork and Chive Potstickers

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I have to apologize to my husband right off the bat, but I’ve been having a (not so secret) love affair with dumplings for pretty much my whole life. When people tell me about how much they themselves love dumplings, in the back of my head, I’m always saying “Nope. Nowhere close to as much as me.” I occasionally even question whether I love them more than Andrea Nguyen who wrote the beloved book “Asian Dumplings“…maybe we’re tied.  From my early memories of eating fat, pleated jiao zi at the Hsian Foong in Arlington, VA, to scraping together pennies to buy the potstickers (like crack) from Ollie’s Noodle Shop while in college, to polishing off plate after plate of crystal chive and shrimp dumplings at dim sum, I look upon the modest dumpling as the penultimate perfect food.

When I asked my friend Tim Ma, chef and owner of Maple Ave Restaurant in Vienna, VA, to do an interview for the site, I was most looking forward to him proffering a mind-blowingly good recipe to share.  When I saw his potsticker recipe, I straight up cheesed – what luck to have access to a recipe that was passed on to him through his family.  And I’d get to eat the results.  The beauty of this recipe is in the simplicity – garlic chives and sesame oil do all of the heavy lifting seasoning the ground pork.  And as Tim explains, the wrappers are an art form – practicing rolling the wrappers yourself is well worth the effort and far better than you could get from most restaurants.  This is the kind of cooking that is rooted in love – you make these dumplings for people that you care for, and hopefully have them join you in the effort. Dumpling party, anyone? I promise I’ll consider sharing one or two.

Learn more about Chef Tim and check out another one of his fabulous recipes by clicking here.

Pan Fried Pork  and Chive Potstickers

1 c. of cold water
3 c. of all purpose flour

2 lbs. of lean ground pork
1 bunch of chinese chives, chopped
1 tsp. of dried shrimp (optional) soaked in 2 tsp. of water or shaoxing wine
4 tsp. of salt (or 3 1/2 tsp. if you use the dried shrimp)
3 tbs. of sesame oil
corn starch (if needed)

Begin by making the dough. Combine water and flour and mix until all flour is just incorporated. Let dough rest for 10 minutes. Next, make the filling. Mix the pork, chives, dried shrimp, salt and sesame oil.

You’re now ready to start making your wrappers and filling the dumplings. Roll out the dough into long sushi roll and cut into small round 1 inch pieces. Use a small rolling pin to flatten it into a wrapper about 3 inches wide.  You are looking for wrappers about the same thickness as gyoza, so when rolling out your own dough, it’s pretty thin.  It’s really an art – you make small balls about 1-inch in diameter, then smash down with your hand.  Roll the pin around the edges until you get your thin wrapper, leaving it a little thicker in the middle and thinner on the edges.

Sprinkle some flour on a clean surface on the kitchen counter. Place each wrapper on the floured surface with the floured side facing up. Put 1 heaping tsp of the filling in the center of each wrapper. Wet your finger in the cup of water and wet all around the outer edge of the wrappers. Close it by folding it up and pressing two wetted sides together. Set it down on a flat surface and make the bottom flat.

After about 20 to 30 finished dumplings, you can set a non-stick flat bottom skillet on the stove. Add 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil in it and place the dumplings all around the skillet. Add two cups of cold water, and then put a lid on the skillet. Turn the temperature to high.
When the water is dry, turn the fire to low. Take out the dumplings when they are golden brown and crispy at the bottom.

Serve with dipping sauce (recipe below). If you like things hot, you can make a spicier dipping sauce out of hot chili paste, soy sauce and sesame oil.

Potsticker Dipping Sauce

3 cloves garlic, chopped
1/2 c. of soy sauce
1/3 c. of rice wine vinegar
1/2 tsp. of  salt
1/2 tbs. of sugar
1/2 tbs. of sesame oil

Mix all ingredients well and serve. Sauce will keep in the refrigerator if you don’t use it all.

Fave Foodies

An Interview with Chef Tim Ma of Maple Ave Restaurant

Recipes from Chef Tim

I would like to share two recipes, my dad’s potstickers and a fancy, roast chicken dish. The potstickers are a great group cooking dish – my family would sit around and make potstickers all afternoon. When you finish filling a batch, you cook it, eat it, make some more, chit chat and on and on. The roast chicken is a better dish if you are looking to make something more elegant.  It’s a classic dish, but shows many fundamentals of good cooking – high heat searing, knife skills, sauce making, etc.

Pan Fried Pork and Chive Potstickers

Roast Chicken Leg and Thigh with Chardonnay Sauce, Trumpet Mushroom Duxelle and Roast Fingerling Potatoes

Caramelized Onions

I met Tim Ma a good while back through work friends, knowing him only as the brilliant engineer that loved good music and going out around DC like the rest of the crew.  When my buddy Kevin mentioned to me that Tim was moving up to NYC to attend culinary school, I was surprised.  “Tim likes to cook?” “Are you kidding? That kid is always cooking.  He’s serious in the kitchen.”  How was it that, as a fellow food dork, I didn’t know this sooner?  As Tim progressed from the French Culinary Institute to time in the kitchen with David Chang (!) to his own award-winning restaurant, Maple Ave, in Vienna, Virginia, I got to live vicariously through his culinary exploits.  I asked Tim if I could interview him for my site because he is the perfect reminder of how in this very short life, if we refuse to take the simplest path and choose to pursue what truly makes us happy (and in his case, what he’s brilliantly gifted at doing), we can make modern miracles out of seemingly nothing.  Plus, Tim is fucking great.  But you’ll understand once you read all about him.

Tim generously offered two incredible recipes for you to prepare for yourselves, and I hope that for any of you guys that don’t live in the DC Metro area and can’t eat at his restaurant, that you cook both tonight.  I mean it.  And if you CAN go to his place, get in your car and go eat there now.  It’s very very necessary.

Tell us about your journey to becoming a chef and restauranteur.
I spent many years a professional student at Georgia Tech, then Johns Hopkins.  After some time working for a couple of government contractors, I decided to throw all the money I spent (and still owe) to learn engineering so that I could spend more money learning how to cook.  My parents owned a restaurant back in the day but shut it down after losing the head chef (and also because of some drunk douche bag who ran his truck through the front of the restaurant).   My uncle, now residing in Chantilly, also ran a restaurant in suburban New York – he ran it for many years and now is retired living off all the money he made in a single decade of his life.  So it is sort of in my blood. In attempting to learn the lessons through my elders’ adventures, I decided if I were to open a restaurant, I would not be leaving it up to some head chef whether my restaurant would live or die.  And I didn’t want to half-ass it assuming that I could cook professionally without some proper instruction. Cooking is not just knowing good food – it’s knowing good fundamentals so that you can cook anything, and learning the discipline that it takes to do this professionally, day-in and day-out.I realized I was not a young spring chicken anymore, so I wasn’t going to battle it out with rich punk kids at CIA.  FCI (The French Culinary Institute in NYC) was a natural fit for me.  Short program and great instructors that taught you what you needed to know and introduced you to who you needed to know.  I had the great support of Joey (Editor: Tim’s fiancée and partner at Maple Ave Restaurant), so much that she quit her job and moved to NYC with me, supported me through FCI and the intensity of NYC.  I got my introduction to David Chang, earned an externship at Momofuku Ko,  learned a ton in my short time there, and then we moved to an island to gather our thoughts and map out our route to where we are today.What is your earliest memory in the kitchen?
My grandfather who would make Chinese bread every morning of his life.  A master of it, he loved it, not for anything else but his own satisfaction.  Imagine having that kind of commitment to something as simple as flour, yeast, and water. And not for fame or money, but only because that is what he found enjoyment in.

How would you describe your cooking style in three adjectives?
Schizophrenic, classic, fun

How has cooking professionally changed the way you approach the kitchen and ingredients?
I never knew the plight that farmers go through for sheer survival.  How they truly have to live day-to-day, and how the term farm-fresh has been so skewed that we have to differentiate between farm-fresh and “other”.  Doesn’t all food come from a farm?

I’ve learned that 99.9% of small-business restaurants survive on the slimmest of margins, and the difference between shutting down and success is less than 10%.  I’ve learned the difference between a good night and a bad night at a restaurant all lies in the preparation and organization of your line, your staff, and surprisingly, your customers.  Service is a delicate orchestra and if someone or something is out of tune, the entire performance is f’ed.  I’ve learned that your food is only as good as the raw material, and it’s not just a saying.  Customers may not be able to tell the difference between Polyface chicken and Tysons chicken, but they know the difference between a good chicken sandwich and a bad one. They may not know why, but they know.

What food trends or ingredients do you currently have a crush on?
Pop-up restaurants. It’s exciting for the staff and for the customers, but the menu has to be something different.  I just can’t move Maple Ave to a temporary spot and cook the same menu and expect people to enjoy it in the same way they enjoy it here.

As for ingredients, I like discovering ingredients that I have never used before, I’m still new to this game, so there are a lot of ingredients.  Galangal, salsify, stinging nettles, to name a few, have been used for years, but I am just now discovering.  I grew up on rice and whatever was on sale at the supermarket.  There aren’t typically a lot of sales on stinging nettles at the supermarket.

What are your favorite foods to prepare on your day off?
Frosted mini-wheats and vanilla ice cream with Hershey’s hard shell.

Who inspires you in the kitchen?
My staff, especially my sous-chef, Nyi Nyi Myint. He has been in this game for a long time and he comes to work every day like it’s his first. He treats the restaurant as if it were his own, and his take on food comes from angles you would never see. I find myself saying “Who the hell would combine those two things?” quite a lot, but very often it works.

What technique or skill do you believe is most important for home cooks to acquire or improve upon?
Plating. It’s amazing how much the way food looks determines how food tastes.  Also, not everything needs to be well done, but everything needs to be prepared fresh and eaten quickly.  Chinese people say that you gotta eat it while its hot or it loses the “essence of the wok.”  I don’t use a wok (well not all the time), but you get the idea.  Stop taking pictures of the food – it’s getting cold. Start eating.

Describe your most favorite meal.
Daddy’s potstickers – the textures of a crunchy bottom, chewy shell, juicy middle (and it should be juicy, not soup dumpling juicy, but there should be some juices) are simply amazing.  The bottom should be just nearly burnt to give it some bitterness, seasoned well, and dipped into a slightly sweet and sour dipping sauce.  Spicy if that’s your thing.

What is your favorite comfort food?
Daddy’s potstickers.  And hot pot when I am sick.

What is the one food or dish that you wish people would never eat again?
McDonald’s cheeseburgers – that’s not meat, people.  But I eat them all the time. It’s like crack – you know it’s gonna kill you, but you still hit up the corner and get your fix.

What is your creative process in crafting new recipes and dishes?
I would like to say I have a calculated process where I map out a dish, then cook it over and over and continue to refine it until it has all the flavor profiles and complexities of the perfect dish, then present it my team of chefs and we discuss it for many hours, then do a test run of blind tastings to see what the general public says.  But the honest truth is we will cook something for family meal at the restaurant, and if we think it’s that good, we will cook a version of it that night as a special.  Or someone will mention something they are craving, and we will try our rendition of that dish even though we may have never cooked it before.  Or I over-ordered pork belly for the week, but I’m not returning it because it’s my fault and not the farmers, so we design a couple dishes to move the product.  More so, menu items are designed because it’s something I wanted to eat, and to justify cooking it for me to eat, I have to cook some to sell as well.

What is your favorite food destination and why?
New York City, because the city revolves around food (and money), and even the pizza in Penn Station is delicious.

 

Hungry for some of Tim’s cooking? Visit him at Maple Ave Restaurant in Vienna, Virginia. Or, try out his recipes for Potstickers, Roast Chicken or Caramelized Onions here on this site.

Baked Goods, Cheese Dishes, Main Courses, Recipes, Vegetarian Dishes

Tiropita (Greek Cheese Pie)

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Back when I was young, I remember my mom hosting a baby shower in my childhood home – gosh, it must have been for my cousin Sydney, but my mom or aunt would have to confirm.  She hit up our Greek market for olives and fresh feta and grape leaves, none of which interested me at the young age of 10.  But she also scored triangles of spanakopita (spinach was still gross to me at that age) and these miraculous cheesy alternatives called tiropita.  I had my first taste of them sneaking one before the guests showed up and man, what a treat.  Salty feta and crisp, buttery phyllo folded into golden triangles of deliciousness.

All of this was well before phyllo dough and phyllo appetizers became common fare at the market, and I’m kind of happy that it’s so easily accessible now.  I’m able to pop into the grocery and make a lavish cheese pie of my own, all without any crazy trips to the market.  I cut down on the traditional amount of feta and amp up the flavors with nutmeg and dried mint.  I keep things creamy with a bit of ricotta as well, but feel free to substitute other cheeses such as cottage cheese or even crumbly, salty mizithra.  Though I typically make this in a 13x9x3 inch pan and cut it into squares, this also works exceedingly well in a deep dish 9 inch round pan cut into triangles.  If you’re planning a party of sorts, consider making this tiropita with a spinach pie as an accompaniment and a greek salad to tie the whole thing together.  It’s a whole lot of buttery goodness without any fuss.  And we all know that fusses are way overrated.

Recipe for

Tiropita

Ingredients
6 eggs
1/2 tbs. oregano
1 tsp. dried mint
12 oz. of feta, crumbled
1/4 tsp. of nutmeg
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 c. of parmasean
16 oz. of ricotta
1/4 tsp. of black pepper
1 stick of butter
1 box of phyllo

In a standing mixer (or with an egg beater), mix together all of the ingredients except for the phyllo and butter until well incorporated.

Grease a 13 x 9 in baking pan. Working carefully and quickly, lay out a sheet of phyllo and butter with a pastry brush. Keep on alternating melted butter and phyllo until you have laid down half of the phyllo. Pour the cheese mixture on top of the phyllo. Top with alternating layers of phyllo and butter. Once you’ve finished with all of the sheets, cut the pie into squares before baking.

Place in the oven and bake on 350° for 45-50 minutes. If the top starts to get too brown, cover with foil for the remainder of the cooking time. Let sit for around 5 minutes before cutting. Serve.

Appetizers and Small Plates, Easy to Prepare, Meat Dishes, Recipes

Middle Eastern Flatbread Pizza

Ok, hold your panties for this one folks (and sorry to all of my many friends who have a problem with the word “panties” – just pretend it didn’t happen).  This one is a middle east platter with flatbread for a plate.  You just eat away until you get to the table top and then lick it clean.  Kidding – use a plate, nasty.  But I do give you permission to lick the plate clean.  Fo sho.

This simple pizza is a riff off of the Lebanese treat, manaeesh, that’s like a pizza with ground meat and sumac.  If you haven’t tried ground sumac before, it’s certainly worth a go – it’s very slightly smoky and earthy, and can be used in lamb and beef dishes for absolute fabulousness.  Rather than marinara and sausage, you’ve got hummus and delicately spiced ground beef.  Mozzarella meets the melty craving and feta adds salty goodness.  Top it all off with cool, lemony tabouleh (which you can buy or make for yourself) and you are in business.  It’s ah-MAY-zing.  And oh so easy to prep for some random guests who decide to pop in.  Because you know those good friends of yours are total randoms.  It’s all good, though.  They always bring good booze, so certainly feed them for their generosity.

Recipe for

Middle Eastern Flatbread Pizza

Ingredients
1 lb. ground beef
1/4 tsp. garlic powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. sumac
pinch of allspice
1/4 tsp. thyme
1/8 tsp. black pepper
1 c. of hummus
1/2 c. of tabouleh
2-3 tbs. of crumbled feta
1/2 c. of mozzarella cheese
2 large flatbreads (pita, naan or even 1 large piece of Afghan bread)

Begin by sauteeing the ground beef until no longer pink.  Drain and return pan to heat.  Mix in the salt, sumac, allspice, thyme and black pepper.  Set aside.

Preheat the oven to 450°.  Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper (or use a pizza stone) and put your flatbread on top.  Spread the hummus on each of the flat breads and top with the ground beef.  Crumble the feta on top and sprinkle the mozzarella over that.  Bake for 7-10 minutes, or until the cheese has melted.

Remove from the oven and let hang out for 3-4 minutes.  Sprinkle the tabouleh on top and cut into wedges.  Serve.

 

Kitchen Soundtrack

Cheese Dishes, Main Courses, Poultry Dishes, Recipes, Sandwiches

Turkey Panini with Brie and Fig Jam

When the Earl of Sandwich ordered his servant to bring him a bit of meat tucked into slices of bread so as to prevent his playing cards from getting greasy, he started a chain reaction that has left me a happy duck.  If I were to live my life eating soup and sandwiches from now until the very end time, I’d be absolutely fine with it all.  Chicken soup and turkey sandwiches along could keep me pleased as punch with enough variety to keep things interesting.

Continue reading Turkey Panini with Brie and Fig Jam →

Easy to Prepare, Main Courses, Meat Dishes, Recipes, Soups and Stews

Roast Pork Udon Noodle Soup

Of the dishes that I crave in an almost manic way, pawing the walls like a crackhead needing a fix, wonton noodle soup is always on the top of the list.  In college, it was brimming bowls of Cantonese Wonton Soup from Ollie’s Noodle Shop in NYC.  The broth studded with crisp shallots and baby spinach featured the most lovely shrimp and pork wontons – I willingly braved the lines and the brusque service just to get my weekly fix.  It was hard for me to imagine a wonton soup better than it, but once I tried the Roast Pork Wonton Noodle Soup at China Fun (also in NYC), I fell head over heels in love.  Blubbery udon noodles, tender slices of barbecued pork and spinach and scallions swimming around in a steaming bowl of broth.  And those wontons.  God, I have dreams about them – I felt a Robert Rodriguez-style need to march right into the kitchen and shoot the cook as the rest of the world didn’t deserve to eat anything so damn good.

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