Anything Could Happen And It Could Be Right Now And The Choice is Yours To Make It Worthwhile
I made this soup a few weeks ago when I was feeling constricted by the season. Now it's March and I'm still trapped by this lose your breath cold, farmers markets in churches, mealy hothouse tomatoes and greens from plastic boxes.
The recipe is easy, inexpensive and highly adaptable. I won't go near it once pea shoots, garlic scapes, and fresh herbs hit the farmstands, but until then, it's the perfect creamy, dairy-free antidote to winter.
Ingredients
1 T olive oil
1 medium onion, sliced thinly
1 head cauliflower, broken into florets
8 oz mushrooms, sliced
1 ts nutmeg
Salt, to taste
1 cup water, divided
5 cups stock
Lots of ground black pepper, to taste
Olive oil to drizzle
Fresh lemon juice, to taste
Method
1. Warm the olive oil in a dutch oven and sweat the onion over low heat for about 15 minutes.
2. Add cauliflower, mushrooms, nutmeg, salt to taste and 1/2 cup water. Increase the heat and let the cauliflower cook for 15 minutes, until tender. Add stock, bring to simmer and cook an additional 20 minutes, uncovered.
3. Puree soup with immersion blender, then let it stand for 20 minutes. If it thickens too much, add remaining water.
4. Drizzle with olive oil and fresh lemon juice and top with freshly ground black pepper. Serve.
The Kettle's on the Boil and We're So Easily Called Away
When my grandparents moved down to Florida, my Sundays changed. No longer would I play backseat driver to my grandma’s endless games of Solitaire. Nor would I trade my grandpa paper route quarters and dimes for the crisp bills he proudly pried from his money clip. But mostly what I missed was Sunday brunch.
Growing up a non-practicing Jew, my grandparents gave me an education through food. We ate pickled herring from the jar, chopped liver on salted sheets of matzo, and whitefish salad on marbled bagels or straight from their clear containers that never quite clicked shut. A pink container of Temp Tee cream cheese made its way out from the back of the fridge - it was too crumbly and dry for the cream cheese and jelly sandwiches I was obsessed with, but on those finger-burning bagels, it melted, as they say, like butter.
My mother must have missed their influence, too; Soon after their move, jars of store bought matzo ball soup appeared. Unlike Campbell’s, Manischevitz sold their soup in glass Vlasic pickle-sized jars. Each filled with cloudy yellow liquid. Upon shaking, orange and green bits flurried around while the beige, cratery globes gently bobbed - a culinary snow globe. Our cupboards looked like the science lab at school.
I’ve never been tempted to try jarred soup as an adult, the way I have other foods from my childhood (Spaghetti Oh’s (kind of good), Pop Tarts (not really very good), Fruity Pebbles (amazingly like chemicals), boxed mac and cheese (still a staple)).
But luckily, we have this recipe to enjoy so we can leave those childhood memories intact.
Ingredients
1 large egg
3 large egg whites
1 TB oil
1/2 ts salt
1/4 ts ground blk pepper
1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley
1 cup matzo meal
3/4 c. seltzer
8 cups stock
small bunch of dill
Method
1. Combine first 5 ingredients (through parsley) in bowl. Add meal and mix. Add seltzer and mix well.
2. Cover and chill until cold and firm - at least 1 hour, up to 2 days. During this time, you can make your stock in your preferred method (I boil a chicken breast + whatever veggies I have. Remove breast once meat is cooked. Clean, add bones back to liquid and simmer 2 hours. Strain, add back shredded chicken.)
3. Shape batter into 1.25” balls, then drop into boiling salted water. Reduce heat to medium-low, cover and cook 45 minutes. No peeking!
4. Once cooked, you can freeze** or transfer to prepared stock and warm 10 minutes. Garnish with dill and serve.
**After cooking for 45 minutes, drain matzo balls and freeze on a plastic covered baking sheet. Once frozen, store in plastic bags. Allow to thaw 1 hour at room temp before using.
Uncle Albert (the best bit of it, anyway)
Greta Gerwig
This is a salad of opposites. The brightness of the grapefruit and lemon cut through the smokiness of the trout. The avocado does double duty, adding heft to the salad, all the while grounding the saltiness of the fish.
It’s a meal in itself, but also lovely with softly scrambled eggs.
And you’ll want to leave leftovers so you can pile them high between two slices of toasted rye the next day.
Ingredients
1 smoked trout, meat shredded
2 T olive oil
1/4 cup + 1 T fresh lemon juice (juice of 1.5 lemons)
salt and pepper
1 grapefruit
2 avocados, cubed
3 cups arugula
1 small red onion, thinly sliced
chopped fresh parsley or mint
Method
1. Whisk oil with lemon juice and season with salt and pepper.
2. Supreme the grapefruit (peel fruit, then cut sections away from the clear membrane) and cut sections into 1” pieces. Be sure to save any juice from the grapefruit and add it to oil / lemon dressing.
3. In a serving bowl, toss arugula and onion with 1 T of dressing. Add grapefruit, radishes, and parsley and toss gently. Add avocados and smoked trout.
Ain't It Funny How You Feel When You're Finding Out It's Real?
These scones were meant for New Year’s Day breakfast. But a recipe requiring a box shredder, seeding a pomegranate, and enough patience for a warmed oven and browned edges is pretty ambitious for any morning - even one in which resolve against laziness is likely at its strongest.
This was my first time making scones. The process is more labor intensive than that for a muffin, but the burst of pomegranate, sour against the six tablespoons of butter, is worth it.
Pomegranate & Yogurt Scones Recipe
Ingredients
2 cups flour
1/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon coarse salt
6 tablespoons cold, unsalted butter
Seeds from 1/2 pomegranate (approx 1/2 cup)
3/4 cup greek yogurt
1 large egg
Method
1. Preheat oven to 400.
2. Mix first five ingredients (through salt). Grate butter into flour mixture. Using your fingers, mix well until the mixture becomes coarse. Stir in pomegranates.
3. In a small bowl, whisk yogurt and egg until smooth. Add to flour and stir well. Using your hands, press the dough against the bowl into a large ball. This will take a couple minutes, but will happen if you keep pressing the dough against the bowl (don’t try to roll a ball between 2 hands).
4. Once all the flour is incorporated, place the ball on a cutting board. Flatten into an 8” circle and cut into ten wedges. Bake wedges on cookie sheet covered with parchment paper for 17 minutes, or until top is browned.
And I Made Black Coffee and Dumped Out The Rest of the Rum
Making batches of eggs in the morning makes me giddy, because it means we were lucky enough to spend the nite prior with friends. And so I never mind waking up to prepare breakfast while a full house sleeps away belly aches and head aches.
These baked eggs can be made, pretty much, with eyes shut, making them the perfect recipe for post New Year’s Eve revelry. Fill ramekins with egg and cream and bake for 10+ minutes. Throw a pack of bacon in the oven and you’ve outdone yourself.
Eggs en Cocotte Recipe
Ingredients
2 T butter
6 large eggs
3/4 cup whipping cream or creme fraiche
coarse salt & ground black pepper to taste
optional:
chopped dill & smoked salmon, sliced into 1” pieces
Method
1. Preheat oven to 350.
2. Coat each ramekin with 1/2 ts butter + 1 T cream
3. Break an egg into each prepared ramekin. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Spoon 1 T cream over each egg.
4. Place ramekins in a baking dish. Add hot water to cover sides of ramekins halfway. Bake for 13 minutes for runny yolks or 16 for medium set. Garnish with smoked salmon, dill and a pinch of salt before serving.
I'll Light the Fire and You'll Place the Flowers in the Jar
I grew up on Shake and Bake pork chops. We ate them weekly, with Mott's apple sauce and frozen and boxed green beans with slivered almonds. [It wasn't until adulthood that I learned that real almonds did not resemble the flavorless, chewy toenail clippings that I'd been taking for almonds for more than a decade.]
The sides might have been underwhelming, but the pork was always delicious. The crisp coating (even the underside, like soggy Raisin Bran, was scraped clean from our plates) made up for the criminal overcooking of pork that was happening in every household in the 1980's.
These chops don't come from a box, but they are easy and quick to make. The zip from the wasabi and ginger provides a nice wake up call from nostalgia and more than bests my childhood memories.
Ingredients
1 egg white, lightly beaten
1/2 cup panko
2 pork chops
1 inch ginger, finely minced
1 T rice vinegar
1 ts coconut or sesame oil
1 T water (or stock)
2 T white wine, sake or sherry
2 T Braggs Amino Acids (or soy sauce)
2 ts wasabi powder
coarse salt
optional
1/4 c scallions, thinly sliced
Method
1. Preheat oven to 375. Oil / spray a baking sheet covered with foil.
2. Set up your coating station by putting panko and egg white each in separate bowls. Dip pork in egg, dredge in panko and place on prepared sheet.
3. Bake for 25-30 minutes, until pork reaches 140 degrees. (alternately, you can cook in cast iron pan, 4 minutes each side). Plate pork and very lightly salt.
3. In a small pan, cook ginger 1 minute, over medium heat.
4. In the meantime, mix rice vinegar and 5 next ingredients in a small bowl. Once wasabi powder is dissolved, add to ginger. Cook 1 minute. Remove from heat. Stir in scallions.
Sometimes when it's 13 degrees outside, we bunker down and make pretty with some bread and fancy bits.
Averting our eyes from frosted windows, we crank up the heat and take our cue from cats: We bask in the sunny spots and pretend that it's summertime.
Ingredients
4 cups whole milk
2 cups light cream or half and half
1 ts coarse sea salt
juice of 1 lemon or 3 T white vinegar
Method
1. Heat dairy and salt over medium heat until it boils. Stir occasionally.
2. Kill heat, add lemon juice (or vinegar) and let sit for 5 minutes. Your milk will start to curdle and look disgusting.
3. Line colander with dampened cheesecloth (or dampened paper towels). Set over a large bowl, if you want to save the whey**. Pour mixture into colander.
4. Let sit for 20 minutes or so. If you want it thicker, let it sit for longer.
**You can use the whey to make another batch of cheese. Repeat the recipe, subbing the whey for the whole milk.
Above:
Ricotta + smoked salmon
Butter + radish, sliced + sea salt
Hard boiled egg, sliced + chives
Ricotta + honey + red pepper flakes
Yesterday, Monday, was grey and gloomy and we had brown soup for dinner. Is that too much sadness in one sentence?
I actually made the soup last week. It's a recipe I've made before. Simple and earthy, this unassuming pot was made even better with fresh pork stock.
But the soup sat in our fridge until the greyest of days, when, armed with a warm baguette and a Granny Smith apple, we finally resigned to warming this pot of rat-brown colored pureed mushrooms.
Halfway through the bowl, a funny thing happened: the drab, poised for snow, sky was no longer that, but the softest blanket of rabbit fur, almost inviting.
And that's what a good soup does. Warms your outlook. Restores your faith in Mondays.
Ingredients
3 lbs mixed fresh mushrooms - sliced (I used shitake and cremini and some randoms I had hanging around)
8 cups stock
4 oz port
2 T butter
1 medium onion, thinly sliced
fresh thyme
1/2 cup rice or 1 small potato, cubed (optional)
1 cup plain Greek yogurt or 1/2 cup half and half
salt and pepper to taste
parsley
Method
1. In a Dutch oven, melt butter and cook onion until soft and translucent. Add mushrooms and cook about 8 minutes. Don't let the onions brown! Add stock, parsley, thyme and starch and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer 1 hour.
2. Let soup cool for 15 minutes, then blend with immersion blender until smooth. Return to Dutch oven, season with salt and pepper. Add dairy and heat until soup is warm enough to serve. Add port, mix well and serve. Garnish with parsley.
I love a soup for Thanksgiving. Not the hurried affair of tossing tomatoes and canned beans into a 10 minute stock. Rather, a soup made with full fat milk and too much half and half. One made with pricey mushrooms only to be pureed. A soup that relies on its quiet flavor, instead of the old one-two punch. In short, a soup that feels special.
This Thanksgiving, I made exactly that - a lobster and seafood bisque that benefited from a generous amount of coconut oil, fresh lobster meat and two days of preparation.
Although this recipe is labor intensive, the heavy lifting is done well before the guests arrive, allowing it to warm patiently on the stove, waiting to be served at your leisure.
Ingredients
1 lb shrimp, peeled and divided
1 filet firm fish (I used mahi mahi)
3 2 lb lobsters (will yield approx 1.5 lb meat)
1 lb mixed mushrooms (I used shitake (including stems) and cremini)
2 ribs celery
1 small potato, cubed
1 cup sherry (port or wine)+ 1/2 cup
3 T coconut oil + 4 T coconut oil (can sub butter)
6 cups milk
2 cups half and half
1 can lite coconut milk
1 oz flour (1/4 c)
1/4 c water
1 ts port
greek yogurt
fresh parsley
1/4 ts paprika
salt and pepper
Method
DAY 1
1. Steam lobsters in 2” water for 12 minutes.
3. Melt 3 T coconut oil over medium-high heat in large dutch oven.
4. Add celery, shells, 1 cup sherry and bring to a boil. Cook 5 minutes.
5. Add milk, half and half, pepper and bring to boil.
6. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer (do not boil!) until slightly thickened, 15-20 minutes. Remove from heat, cool to room temperature and chill overnight.
DAY 2
1. Strain milk mixture from the day before. Discard shells and solids. Return mixture to dutch oven and warm.
2. In a separate pot, cook potato until soft. Drain water and add coconut milk, shrimp and mushrooms. Bring to a boil. Cook 3 minutes, until shrimp are done.
3. In the meantime, in a small bowl, combine flour and water. Stir well, then add to boiling coconut milk. Cook 1 minute, until thick. Add to coconut milk mixture. Stir well and remove from heat. Blend with immersion blender and add to warming milk mixture. Add paprika, salt and black pepper to taste.
4. Once soup is well-heated through, melt 4 T coconut butter and cook remaining shrimp, fish and lobster until raw bits are cooked and lobster is warmed through (less than 5 minutes). Add 1/2 c sherry and increase heat to high.
5. Fill bowls with soup and top with lobster, shrimp and fish. Garnish with a squeeze of lime, greek yogurt and parsley.
Serves 4 with lots of leftover soup**.
**Add sambal olek, rice noodles and copious amounts of cilantro and lime to the leftover bisque for lunch the next day.
I Put Another Record On My Stereo, But I'm Still Singing A Song Of You
Over the past decade, Thanksgiving tradition has gone out the window with the turkey, but I wouldn't have it any other way.
We've rung the bell of an unfamiliar door with a bottle of wine and our empty stomachs, eaten fish tacos on the balcony of a Maui rental, inhaled tamales while searching for our next bite on the streets of Tulum, and slept through our dinner reservation, waking with heads still cloudy from a day of Sonoma wine-tasting.
Some years we spend local, passing a crystal bowl of jiggling cranberry relish around Grandma's table. And others, we spend with friends squeezed around our makeshift farmhouse table, knees knocking table posts.
This year there were just 4 of us, which allowed for ample knee and elbow room and plenty time between hanging up my apron to dry and our friends walking through the front door.
And so we sat in the living room, waiting for our friends to make the 90 mile trek north, while snacking like birds and sipping this (super simple) rum-spiked hot apple cider.
Ingredients
8 cups apple cider (freshly juiced or from the market)
2 ts ground cinnamon
1 ts ground nutmeg
small piece of ginger, grated (optional)
5 sprigs of rosemary
8 oz rum
Method
1. Combine all ingredients but 4 sprigs of rosemary and rum in pot. Heat thoroughly and until dry spices are dissolved. Remove from heat.
2. Add rum. Mix and serve, garnishing each glass with a fresh sprig of rosemary.
All Your Secret Wishes Could Right Now Be Coming True
I keep reading about the backlash against kale. While it may be human nature to scoff at trends, I love that I can walk into just about any restaurant and enjoy a kale salad without the time it takes for the perfect chiffonade or the effort to get out the blender to purée anchovies.
That said, maybe I'm still doe-eyed on the kale bandwagon. Aside from kale chips, I really only cooked with it the first time a few years ago. My first love was a zippy Asian-y salad I posted about here. A year later, I obsessed over Five Leaves' creamy anchovy version enough to replicate it here.
Since then, my go to kale salad has become less fussy (just 4 ingredients), a bit healthier and lightning quick to prepare.
1 bunch kale, sliced into strips (Tuscan kale is best)**
Juice of 1 lemon
1 TB olive oil
1/2 very ripe avocado, cubed
3 oz feta cheese, crumbled (French is best)
Lots of black pepper
Red pepper flakes, to taste
Spiced almonds, if you're fancy
Method
1. Combine lemon, avocado and oil with kale in large bowl. Massage until well dressed, making sure to mash avocado to a paste.
2. Add pepper. Toss well.
3. Add feta cheese (and a little liquid from the feta, if you like. Serve.
**The fastest way to chop kale into skinny little strips is to devein, then stack 6 or so pieces before rolling into a bundle. Slice the bundle in the same direction as the vein.).
Even Before I Learned Her Name, You Know I Loved Her Just The Same
I would never pickle a cherry in May or June. But by the end of July, when it's difficult to remember the excitement of the first cherries of the season, all bets are off.
The result is addictively satisfying (sweet! sour! spicy!). And despite the quick boil, the fruit remains fleshy and plump.
We ate these odd little cherries with copious amounts of cheese and a very fun champagne and recommend you do the same.
Ingredients
3/4 cup white vinegar
1/2 cup water
2 TB honey
1/4 ts coarse salt
2 ts whole black peppercorns
2 ts whole mustard seeds
1/4 ts cumin
1/2 ts red pepper flakes
1 dried red chili (optional)
1/2 - 3/4 lb fresh sweet, firm cherries, stemmed and pitted
Method
1. Combine all ingredients but cherries in a pot. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to simmer. Add cherries.
2. Simmer 3-5 minutes to soften cherries.
4. Transfer to jar and refrigerate for at least 1 hour before serving.
On unbearably hot summer nights when you're forced to eat dinner in your bikini, nothing beats the convenience of a citrusy, spicy larb. Requiring just ten minutes to prep, and even less burner time, the only thing making you sweat will be the jalapeños.
Spicy Tangy Larb
Ingredients
Juice from 3 large limes
1 T fish sauce
1 T rice vinegar
1 ts Sambal Oelek
1/4 lb ground turkey
1/2 lb peeled raw shrimp, chopped
1 jalapeño, minced (mince the whole pepper for more heat)
1 small red onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1" ginger, minced
1 ts fish sauce
1 ts Braggs Amino Acids
2 scallions, chopped
salt and black pepper, to taste
cilantro, to taste
The largest leaves from a head of iceberg lettuce
Method
1. Combine first 4 ingredients, put aside.
2. Over medium flame, heat cast iron pan coated with cooking spray.
3. Cook onion, garlic, ginger, and jalapeño until softened, approximately 2 minutes. Add ground turkey. Cook 2 minutes, stirring to ensure turkey remains crumbled. Add fish sauce, Braggs and shrimp.
4. Cook until shrimp is cooked thru and no longer transluscent. Remove from heat. Stir in scallions, cilantro and salt and black pepper. Combine with reserved sauce and mix well.
You knew in five minutes. But I knew in a sentence.
Like most rational people, food generally does not annoy me. But corn, masquerading as a vegetable, drives me mad. It's loaded with sugary and fatty calories and, even though it's creamy and milky, it contains no calcium.
Roasted Corn & Tomato Salad
Ingredients
4 slices bacon
1 small red onion, chopped
Kernels from 3 ears of corn
juice of 1.5 limes
zest of 1 lime
1 container cherry or grape tomatoes, halved or quartered
1 ripe avocado, chopped
1 jalapeño, minced
bunch of cilantro or basil, chopped
Salt and pepper, to taste
Method
1. Cook bacon over medium high-heat until crispy. Remove from pan. Add onion to bacon grease and cook until softened, about 5 minutes. Add corn and cook another 2 minutes, stirring frequently. Add cherry tomatoes and cook 4 minutes, until tomatoes are softened, but not collapsed. Remove from heat.
2. Crumble bacon and add to corn mixture. Add jalapeno, black pepper, lime juice and stir well. Add avocado, lime zest, herb and a pinch of salt. Toss gently and serve with lime wedges, or an extra squeeze of lime.
Start of the season always lends itself to minor extravagances. And so after a half-hearted forage for ramps, I found myself at the market overpaying for a soft shell crab and a bunch of the elusive ramps.
Wanting something bright and stringent to cut through the meaty soft shell crab, I quick pickled the ramps using my old standby recipe.
In the way that I rarely want an oyster that isn’t on the half-shell, or a broiled or stuffed lobster, I generally don’t pickle foods that are already delicious and special on their own.
And yet, in the days that followed, I ate these slimy strings of ramps over piles of arugula, buried in avocado sandwiches, sharing forks with rosemary panko pork and, too often, straight from the jar until my skin breathed garlic and vinegar.
I Should Have Known Better, But I Couldn't Say Hello
There will be a sunny Saturday in April when you know you should stop craving shoyu ramen and meatballs and warm baguettes with Irish butter and saucisson sec.
On this day, you'll think about making a righteous kale salad. And yet.
I rarely cook with dill, but I like the way its sharpness cuts through the dense egg and bread. That said, the recipe is foolproof and works with virtually any leafy green and herb. If you're feeling indulgent, add cheddar or gruyere or crumbled bacon or sausage. Regarding bread, days old baguette is ideal, but even processed white hamburger buns will work in a pinch.
Collard Greens and Dill Bread Pudding
Ingredients
3 cups milk
a big bunch of fresh dill, chopped
6 leaves of collard greens - deveined and chopped
8 slices of old bread, cubed
3 eggs
3 egg whites
1/2 cup cottage cheese
salt and pepper to taste
Method
1. Place chopped bread in single layer of an oiled, buttered or sprayed baking pan. Pan should be at least 2” deep.
2. Combine milk with cottage cheese, then pour over bread.
3. Layer collards over bread.
4. Mix eggs, egg whites and dill, then pour over collards.
5. Season with salt and pepper and bake in 400 degree oven for 30-40 minutes, until top is browned.
6. Allow to sit at least 10 minutes before serving.
I have a husband who eats cookies indiscriminately. It’s a nice trait, this ability to derive the same amount of pleasure from a noisy bag of Tates as from a sleeve of chalky Chips Ahoy.
But though it may be quaint, I also happen to think it's very wrong.
In an effort to rehabilitate the problem, I made this mini batch of toaster oven cookies.
3* Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter Cookies [adapted from No. 2 Pencil, via Cup of Jo]
Ingredients
1 T butter, softened
1 T peanut butter
2 T brown sugar
1 T granulated sugar
1/4 ts vanilla extract
1 egg yolk
1/4 ts baking soda
1/4 c. AP flour
2 T semi-sweet chocolate chips
pinch of coarse salt
Method
1. Preheat oven to 350
2. Blend butter, sugars, peanut butter, salt and vanilla.
3. Add egg yolk and blend. Add baking soda and flour. Mix until blended.
4. Add chocolate chips.
5. Divide dough into 3 and space evenly on parchment papered baking sheet.
6. Bake 11 minutes, or until edges brown.
7. Remove from oven. Bang sheet on counter to deflate cookie and give it its proper wrinkles. Cool 5 minutes before carefully transferring cookies to cooling rack.
* The original recipe claims to serve just one. But I found the yield to be 3 decently sized cookies.
