This one goes out to my best friend Kate, my partner in crime for the majority of my favorite shenanigans of all time. That’s right, of all time. Kate and I have been friends since well before I was legally allowed to and/or had the money to pay for the margarita below. And yet, when I think about the sheer giggle fits we’ve shared in this rag tag life, I’m amazed at how few were dependent upon tequila or discretionary funds. Continue reading Hibiscus Chile Margarita
I adore putting together a menu, but like a grocery shopper entering the store with a rumbling tummy, I find that I often set myself up for a challenge. Between my need to feed my guests with reckless abandon, to a love of a seemingly daunting menu, I face the issue of running out of steam. Couple that with my lack of prowess in the realm of desserts, I find that many of my menus end up being a bit front-loaded in terms of the serious cooking. Which is why, lovely readers, I am a sucker for a dessert that is simple to prepare, with a heavy dose of wow factor.
Summertime on the east coast (or pretty much anytime on the west coast – you guys have easy access to berries!) always meant an abundance of ripe strawberries just begging to be picked up and taken home. In my house growing up, we always kept it simple – cut the tops, halve the berries and toss with a few teaspoons of sugar. As the berries hung out, they’d give off the most lovely scarlet juice, which we then used to sauce the little shortcakes you could pick up in the produce section of the store. A little whipped cream, and we were in business. Continue reading Strawberries with Elderflower and Mint
It’s not terribly often that I have a dish that makes me want to have a mini fit, but when it happens, I try to do everything I can to extend the excitement. I had a salad similar to this one at one of my favorite NYC restaurants, Marseille. Between the tender prosciutto, warm buttered croutons and luxe truffle oil dressing, I wanted to hug a stranger and do a jump kick for joy. Truthfully, though the taste is haute, the ingredients themselves are not terribly expensive or hard to come by. With the truffle oil as your only splurge, the real luxury comes from the lovely combination of flavors and texture. Making fresh croutons and serving them warm on the salad is an essential part of the glory – with just a few ingredients joining the peppery bed of arugula, you want to make sure that everything is just right. After all, the end result should be a mini fit, and for a salad to achieve that honor, it’s got to be damn good. Continue reading Arugula Salad with Truffle Vinaigrette
You should be ashamed of yourself. I saw you eyeing the pasta on that Olive Garden commercial with hungry eyes. You know it’s not delicious. You know it wasn’t actually created in a Tuscan cooking school with Michelin star winning chefs. Most importantly, you know you can’t trust any place that thinks variety in ingredients is a simple choice between chicken in cream sauce or sausage in tomato cream sauce. For shame, OG, for shame! Continue reading Pasta with Camembert, Asparagus and Peas
I don’t know what it is, but whenever I think of pao de queijo, I think of my mother. In that she is the first generation on her mother’s side born outside of Brazil, she made a big deal about passing on the culture and heritage of our ancestors down to my sister and I. For the two of us, culture always related to the kitchen in some way, shape or form, and the true “mother” of heritage came in the Brazilian feast, feijoada completa. A celebration through and through, feijoada completa meant cherished guests and many, many plates and platters on the table, all marks of a few days of cooking in order to stage all of the dishes. It was some kind of special, and the meal kicked off with a special treat – pao de queijo. Translated into English, it literally means “cheese bread,” but make no mistake – these babies are so much more. Made of tapioca flour and crumbly, salty cheese, they more closely resemble cheese puffs than actual bread. Eaten fresh from the oven, we noshed happily while waiting for the rest of the feast to come together (usually waiting for the white rice to finish cooking or for dad to put the final touches on the greens).
Interestingly enough, my mom’s a french professor, and over the years my sister and I have become mini-francophiles by association. My sister even downplays the influences from over the years, cracking jokes in a perfect French accent. Petite Beurre cookies and homemade madeleines were just as much a part of our kitchen as Brazilian specialties. In a complete and total cultural blend, our beloved pao de queijo held many of the same characteristics as the classic French cheese puffs, gougère. The little treats, made of gruyere or comte cheese, were savory, chewy and airy just like their Brazilian cousins. An apropos association, if I do say so myself.
Because pao de queijo are traditionally made with a cooked dough called a pâté choux, the old school recipe can be a bit daunting. In fact, we often purchased the frozen variety from specialty markets for quick snacking. But when my mom turned me on to a blender version, I tried it out with great success and haven’t looked back since. In fact, the hardest part of the recipe is tracking down the tapioca flour, which is barely a challenge in that not only Whole Foods, but most regular grocery stores carry the stuff under the Bob’s Red Mill brand. I’ve had the most success with making the batter and baking these guys pretty much right when I have the craving to snack away. I’ve also had excellent success with a 24 mini-cup muffin tin – it allows a mess of pao de queijo to be baked all at once for aggressive snacking. And, as you know, aggressive snacking is what we were all born to do.
Ingredients
1 egg
1 1/3 c. of tapioca flour
2/3 c. of whole milk
1/3 c. of olive oil
6 oz. of queso fresco, crumbled
1 tsp. of salt
1/8 tsp. of white pepper
Preheat the oven to 400°. In a blender, add the egg, milk, olive oil, salt, queso fresco and white pepper. Put the tapioca flour on top and blend on low until mostly mixed. Scrape down the flour on the sides of the blender and blitz again on low. Pour batter into greased muffin tin and bake for 20 minutes or until puffy and golden. Serve immediately.
Cannot even begin to tell you how much I adore this menu. Yes, it is a challenge and yes, you’ll probably want a couple of hands to help with the staging, prep and cooking. But it’s well worth the effort in that it is no less than glorious.
The concept of the Feast of the Seven Boars was born as both a riff off of the Feast of the Seven Fishes and an excuse to pay homage to one of my favorite proteins, wild boar. Without all of the religious undertones, our feast was focused on the loving and careful preparation of an ingredient so worthy of a spotlight. While both beef and poultry are offered as myriad unique cuts and varieties (you’ve got your kobe, your poussin and your capon at the grocery store down the street), pork is offered as a bland, flavorless option with both the fat and the taste bred out in one fell swoop. As far as I’m concerned, “the other white meat” campaign is a form of sacrilege. It’s no wonder that so many Americans eschew the idea of eating pork, what with the options in front of them so horribly tasteless.
I had a silent celebration the moment I spotted wild boar in the online store for Marx Foods – thoughts of what to do with 17 pounds of wild boar shoulder roast in all its rosy glory was blissful. Rather than give in to the giddiness, I got to work crafting a series of recipes that would make good use of the meat. Given that it holds up to cooking, I decided to go with braises, roasts and ground preparations to showcase the tender, meltingly gorgeous meat.
Many of the recipes were born of my time spent in Orvieto, a champion of a city in terms of featuring wild boar in the best of preparations. Recipes were slightly tweaked to make room for the boar, like my Post-Thanksgiving Stuffed Mushrooms with boar in lieu of sausage, and boar instead of pork in the bolognese and meatballs. We bolstered the meat feast with seasonal veggies like miner’s lettuce, stinging nettles and fiddlehead ferns. We also had some help from the experts, to include Eric Ripert’s Cinghiale Dolce Forte and Ciao Bella’s Straciatella Gelato. We rounded out the meal with a bottle of chilled limoncello, bowled over by the fact that boar was such a special treat rather than a shop standard. Oh, well. Someday. But until then, consider gathering a group of hungry foodie friends, some wild boar and a few days of sheer dedication for one of the most glorious pay offs in terms of feasts. Mangia!
My time spent in Orvieto, Italy, much like the experience of many students studying abroad in college, was all about turning my preconceived notions on their proverbial heads. I never imagined that following up on a random postcard in my mailbox for a summer “arts” program in the heart of Tuscany would lead to a series of revelations in terms of ingredients, cooking and collecting food memories. Up until that point, Pizza Hut wasn’t a four letter word, ice cream and gelato could be considered one in the same, and a bottle of wine per person wasn’t considered a reasonable lunch. But all of that was thrown out the window, and I was utterly spellbound by all of the tastes and sights and experiences surrounding me. I discovered fava beans, pasta cooked in red wine, tomato-less bolognese, fresh porcini mushrooms and young white wines with ne’er an additive or preservative. I ate gelato after every meal, and sometimes as my meal, choosing flavors that tasted riper than fresh fruit. I learned that in Italy, I couldn’t leave the table before finishing the bottle of grappa or limoncello plonked there by the owner, much like a child forced to eat their vegetables before clearing off. I even taught an Italian movie star to do the robot while simultaneously doing an impression of Julia Child. I was officially living the life. Continue reading Pappardelle con Cinghiale
Meatballs have been getting a lot of play lately. From the incessant features on the Meatball Shop in NYC, to the meatball entrepreneur Joey on America’s Next Great Restaurant and his “Saucy Balls,” it’s as if ballmania has struck and there isn’t an end in site. For me, though, meatballs have always played a part in my collective food memory. Although I never got to know my Sicilian side of the family in person, their customs and traditions were passed down to me through my grandmother and mother. Making a sauce, or gravy as it’s truly called, involved frying off scores of homemade meatballs, and I’d stand close by for the chance to snag a taste. Apparently the tradition of searing all of the meatballs but one, and then cooking the last one through to give to someone you love came from my grandmother long before I learned it from my mother. I like to think of my mom as a kid, indulging in the perfectly seasoned and seared meatball as the most loving of gifts in that it was rooted in tradition. No kids of my own, I have been known to carry on the tradition with my husband – he himself grew up in a part-Sicilian household as well, and where my fam was doling out tastes of meatballs, his was doing the same thing with his mother’s expertly cooked chicken cutlets. It’s only fitting that we’re together and I can carry on a legacy of culinary “sharing means caring” traditions.
For those in the know, the secret to a good meatball is a good crust on the outside and a tender, juicy center. Although I’ll still sear off a meatball or two in a pan with olive oil, I’ve since converted to the baked meatball camp. You still get the lovely outer crust and it’s a whole hell of a lot less messy since you don’t have to tend to these over a greasy stove top. Because these babies were a part of my dinner party, the Feast of the Seven Boars, I used a combination of traditional ground beef and the less traditional but gloriously flavorful, wild boar. If you can’t get your hands on any boar, feel free to substitute ground pork or veal. Depending on how much time you have, you can simmer these the normal way on the stove in a lovely bath of San Marzano tomatoes OR you can take your sweet time and allow them to bubble away in a crock pot for a few hours OR you can be impatient and cook them in a pressure cooker for a mere 20 minutes. Any way you cook them, you’ll be treated to a perfectly tender treat meant to be served atop a delicious mess of pasta – maybe some bucatini with a heavy dose of crushed red pepper. Or you could just eat them straight away and skip the pasta. It is tradition, you know.
Ingredients
3 lbs. of ground wild boar (or pork or veal)
1 lb. of ground beef
1/2 an onion, finely minced
6 cl. of garlic, finely chopped
1 c. of grated locatelli
1/2 c. of chopped parsley
1 c. of bread crumbs
4 eggs, beaten
1 1/2 tsp. of salt
1/2 tsp. of black pepper
1 tbs. of crushed oregano
1/2 tablespoon of crushed red pepper
3 large cans of whole san marzano tomatoes
1/2 c. of chicken stock
2 cloves of garlic, sliced
salt to taste
handful of torn basil leaves
1 tbs. of olive oil
1 tbs. of butter
1 lb. of bucatini, perciatelli or similar long pasta
Preheat oven to 450°. In a large bowl or a standing mixer, blend the meat, onion, garlic, parsley, eggs, crumbs, salt, pepper and oregano until thoroughly mixed. Wet hands and form 1/4 c. of the meat mixture into round balls. Place on a foil lined cookie sheet and bake in the oven for 20 minutes.
In a large pot, add the tomatoes and crush gently with a spoon. Add the garlic, chicken stock and salt and stir. Add the meatballs and allow to simmer for at least 30 minutes – longer if you can stand it. When the meatballs are just about finished, cook the pasta according to the package directions. Toss with a cup or two of the meatball sauce, olive oil and butter. Toss the basil leaves in the hot pasta to wilt and top with some of the meatballs. Serve with grated cheese and extra crushed red pepper.
Champagne hasn’t been my friend for a long time. I go from bubbly to drunk to very hungover and unhappy in a matter of sips, and it’s a major thumbs down in that I adore a fizzy tipple once in a while. Although I like to occasionally dance with danger and partake a troublesome glass or two, I vastly prefer anything that’ll give me the same sensation without all the pain. Given that vodka and I are copacetic, I adore this incredibly simple martini that garners its bubbles from non-alcoholic pear cider. But not to worry, my off-the-wagon friends. This sparkler combines the ripe flavor of luscious pear vodka and floral St. Germain into a sweet, but strong (good and strong!) martini of the most delightful nature. I sip away with no regrets or apprehension, knowing that I’ll be staving off a vicious hangover. Well, assuming that I don’t drink five of these in a row without a second thought. Let’s pretend that’s never happened before, ok? Continue reading Sparkling Pear Martini
I love a good story, and with a name like “Green Goddess” you know there’s a bit of a tale lingering around. An almost kitschy throwback to the 1920s and 30s, the dressing is a zesty combination of fresh herbs, anchovies and sour cream, enlivened by a little bit of lemon juice. The name supposedly originates from the Palace Hotel in San Francisco where the dressing was made as a tribute to the hit play, “The Green Goddess,” and alas, a star was born.
My guess is that the popularity of this gem died down with the waning of favor over anchovies – a pity, really, in that the flavor profile of anchovies themselves are addictive. If people can down caesar dressing by the gallon, what’s the deal with hating on anchovies? It’s plain malarkey.
The recipe for this dressing is a riff off a version from Food and Wine Magazine used to dress a chicken salad. My husband took a look at the picture and said, “This would be great without all of that other mess around it.” “So you mean just the dressing?” “Yeah, pretty much.” After a few tweaks to the recipe and a bed of greens, we were cooking with gas.
So where does a nostalgic dressing trip down memory lane take us. To a salad with just as much historical presence. 1930 at the Hollywood Brown Derby heralded the chefery of Robert Cobb and Chuck Wilson – apparently the owner Cobb wandered around the kitchen looking for something awesome to eat and threw together a crazy amalgamation of greens, bacon, eggs, avocado and blue cheese. I can appreciate a late-night scrounge for munchies, if I do say so myself.
In plating this salad, I love a careful presentation of each ingredient segmented into its own section. Something about the vibrant colors in their own spots just waiting to be mixed together with the lovely dressing is an impressor and a half. As you know, it’s all about the presentation…says the designer.
Ingredients
1/2 c. of parsley leaves, loosely packed
1/2 c. of basil leaves
1/4 c. of chopped dill
4 sprigs of tarragon, leaves removed and chopped
1 sprig of oregano, leaves removed and chopped
1 c. of mayonnaise
zest of 1 lemon
juice of half a lemon
1/4 c. of chopped chives
salt and pepper to taste
mixed greens (baby romaine is fun)
3 plum tomatoes, seeded and diced
2 perfectly hard-boiled eggs, diced
4 slices of bacon, cooked and crumbled
1 avocado, diced
1/2 c. of crumbled blue cheese
1 boneless skinless chicken breast, halved lengthwise into two cutlets
1 tbs. of olive oil
1 tbs. of herbes des provence
Begin by making the dressing – add all of the herbs except for the chives to the food processor, along with the garlic, lemon zest and juice. Blitz until finely chopped and then add the mayo. Blitz again to blend and then remove to a bowl. Stir in the chives and then season with salt and pepper. Chill.
Heat the olive oil in a skillet. While that warms, season the chicken with the herbes des provence and salt and pepper. Sear the chicken until it is cooked through and browned on both sides. Remove from pan and let cool slightly. Cube chicken and set aside.
Grab a large platter and make a bed of greens. Arrange the tomatoes, chopped eggs, chopped bacon, avocado, blue cheese and chicken in a pretty splay. Right before serving, toss the salad and top with the Green Goddess dressing. Tuck in and get down.
