The Wednesday Chef

  • Friday Link Love

    Picstitch(3)

    Pardon the delay, dear readers, of my Friday link love, but I couldn't bring myself to post a thing yesterday, not with my heart in my throat at the thought of what was happening in Watertown, just a few minutes down the highway from my father's house. It was all way too close to home yesterday. Way too close to home.

    This morning, I'm so proud of the city of Boston, not just the incredible police work that was done, but the courage of regular Bostonians to get through what must have been an absolutely terrifying day. I so fervently hope that Monday's injured make a swift and triumphant recovery now. Oh man, people's bravery just flays my heart open. I can't stop thinking about this guy in particular. (To help the man he saved, who does not have health insurance, donate here: Bucks for Bauman. To donate to the Boston Police Foundation, click here. The Richard family needs help here. The injured MBTA officer's friends are raising money here. If you know of other victims who need help, please post them in the comments.)

    I flew to London yesterday for a weekend with my three best friends. We'll be celebrating Teri's 40th birthday here and going to what is apparently "the best farmer's market in London!" and eating Indian takeaway if I have anything to say about anything and cuddling Betsy's newborn son and swanning around the Tate and swapping facial care tips (motherhood and age, man) and getting career advice and going shopping together and making life plans and, you know, all the good stuff we wait all year for. Most of all, blessing our lucky stars, too.

    Elsewhere,

    Reinventing the sandwich (with pickles and herbs!).

    A really long, really good interview with Michael Pollan.

    Deb finally cracks the Bienenstich code.

    The New Yorker gave the audio edition of this book a great review.

    Fuchsia Dunlop makes even simple meals sound irresistible.

    And finally, a little interview I did on our Berlin neighborhood.

    Have a good weekend, folks – be safe and hug your loved ones, over and over again.

    Posted in
    12 comments on Friday Link Love

  • Melissa Clark’s Chicken Curry with Sweet Potatoes

    Chicken curry with sweet potatoes

    Sometimes a recipe so good comes along that it threatens to blow everything else you've ever eaten clean out of the water. Melissa Clark's chicken curry is that recipe.

    I don't even know what else to say! That's how good it is.

    Okay, here's something: It is a measure of my wifely devotion that after I made it last week, I actually put some aside for my husband to have when he came home on Friday night. Forget being the sole caretaker of our child five days a week, 24 hours a day. Giving up a portion of this delicious-beyond-words curry was the real sacrifice.

    Chopped ginger, scallions, chile and garlic

    Now, Melissa paired the recipe with a very convincing argument that, when in the mood for chicken, one should always buy a whole animal and break it down ourselves. And that's usually what I do. But the day I wanted to make this, I passed by a butcher at the market who happened to be selling whole chicken legs, and since I like dark meat best anyway, I decided to buy three of those and have the butcher cut them into two pieces each, drumstick and thigh.

    What's important here is that you use bone-in chicken, between six and eight pieces of it. It's also important that you use a real Thai curry paste. I bought Mae Ploy and am currently taking suggestions on how to use the rest of it up, please and thank you very much.

    Chicken curry

    For the curry, you make a wonderfully aromatic base, after browning the chicken pieces on both sides, with scallions and ginger and garlic and chiles (I used just one jalapeño and the curry nearly blew Max's head off, so proceed with caution if you want more) and curry paste. Then you chop in a couple sweet potatoes and put the browned chicken on top. In goes a little water and then, once the pot is boiling, you put the whole thing in the oven. Yay! I love recipes like that. Then I get to clean everything up and I don't have to worry about stirring or things boiling over or anything else.

    Once the chicken is done, there are really only a few things left to do.

    A. You must reduce the sauce until it's creamy and, er, sauce-like. (Removing the chicken and potatoes beforehand so they don't overcook and fall apart.)

    B. You must be sure to toast coconut and mustard seeds and not let them burn. Please, whatever you do, DO NOT SKIP THIS STEP. (Forgive the yelling, people! It's just that this topping totally completes me and the dish!)

    C. You must be sure to have a few wedges of lime around. You must! In a pinch, you may use lemon, I guess. But skip either and YOU MIGHT AS WELL SKIP THE ENTIRE RECIPE! (I'm sorry, I really am. But I'm kind of worked up about this right now?)

    D. And you must have some cilantro on hand. (Even if you hate it, like me! You need it here. Promise me?)

    Toasted coconut and mustard seed

    Ooh, now's the best part. Pour the reduced sauce over the chicken and potatoes. Then sprinkle the toasted coconut and mustard seed mixture over the serving dish (or, if you have guests, you could have them do this to their own portions). Squeeze lime on top, add the cilantro, and then help yourself and start eating. Just try and see if you can stop at only one serving.

    Then, once you've done that, please tell me what words you would use to describe the dish because, honestly, nothing I can come up with seems close to doing it justice right now.

    Okay, one last try:

    Total perfection!

    Best thing I've eaten all year!

    HOME RUN!

    Melissa Clark's Chicken Curry with Sweet Potatoes
    Serves 4

    1 (3 1/2-pound) whole chicken, cut into 8 pieces
    2 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt, more as needed
    Black pepper, as needed
    2 tablespoons peanut, safflower or vegetable oil
    1/4 cup finely chopped scallion
    1 1/2 inches fresh ginger, peeled and grated (1 1/2 tablespoons)
    3 garlic cloves, finely chopped
    1 jalapeño chile, seeded and finely chopped
    2 tablespoons red curry paste
    1 (15.5-ounce) can coconut milk
    2 medium sweet potatoes (1 pound), peeled and cut into 1 1/2-inch chunks
    3/4 cup coconut flakes
    1 tablespoon black or brown mustard seeds
    Fresh cilantro leaves
    Lime wedges

    1. Heat oven to 325 degrees. Pat chicken dry with paper towels and season with salt and pepper.

    2. Heat a large Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add oil. Brown chicken pieces, in batches if necessary, until golden all over, 6 to 8 minutes per batch. Transfer chicken to a plate.

    3. Stir scallion, ginger, garlic and chiles into pot and reduce heat to medium. Cook, stirring, until soft, 1 to 2 minutes. Stir in curry paste and cook 1 minute. Stir in coconut milk and sweet potatoes. Arrange chicken pieces on top of potatoes, placing breast meat on top. Pour in enough water to come halfway up the sides of chicken (about 1/2 cup). Bring to a boil. Cover pot and transfer to oven. Bake until chicken is cooked through, about 40 minutes.

    4. Meanwhile, in a large dry skillet over medium heat, toast coconut flakes until golden, 2 to 3 minutes. Add mustard seeds and toast until they begin to pop, 1 minute more. Transfer to a bowl and season with a pinch of salt.

    5. Transfer chicken and sweet potatoes to a platter. Return Dutch oven to the stove and simmer over medium-high heat until cooking liquid has thickened to a saucelike consistency, 5 to 10 minutes. Pour over chicken and potatoes. Sprinkle with the coconut and mustard seed mixture and cilantro. Serve with lime wedges for squeezing.

    Posted in , ,
    54 comments on Melissa Clark’s Chicken Curry with Sweet Potatoes

  • A Real German Breakfast

    German breakfast spread

    It occurred to me yesterday, while I was putting together a groaning board for our Sunday breakfast with our friends and their two boys, that you might like to see what a real German breakfast is like. After all, German breakfasts are the stuff of legend, at least based on my anecdotal reading of all the times people have mentioned to me their wonder upon experiencing their first German breakfast, whether as exchange students in college or as business travellers or tourists as adults.

    The French and Italians are dainty eaters at breakfast. A cornetto dipped in coffee or a split piece of baguette with a café crème are about the norm. After all, the most important meals in those countries are at lunchtime and dinner. But the Germans like to pull out the stops at breakfast (especially weekend breakfasts). Lots of different cheeses, meats, multiple jams and honey, boiled eggs, fruit and vegetables, smoked fish and of course, every kind of roll or hearty, seeded bread your heart could desire.

    German breakfast cheeses

    In preparation for our Sunday breakfast, we went to the market on Saturday afternoon (this one, for a change) and made the rounds of the different stands. We bought a thick block of English cheddar and a piece of ash-covered French goat cheese from the cheesemonger. (On Sunday morning, I added a piece of Comté, a small round of Camembert, and some herbed fresh cheese to the table. The key to a good German breakfast is a feeling of surplus and bounty!)

    German breakfast meats

    Then we bought a piece of liverwurst (a must for any breakfast with German children and a special treat for those of us who were once German children (or, you know, Italian-American children growing up in Germany)) and Schlackwurst, a kind of German salami.

    German breakfast jams

    For the sweeter-toothed among us, there should be at least a couple of jams on a German breakfast table. (Homemade, of course!) I put out raspberry-mint, quince jelly, and strawberry-rhubarb, with spoons for each jam. That way, people could serve themselves jam with the dedicated spoon and skip putting their dirty knives into the jam jars.

    German breakfast rolls

    On Sunday morning Max and Hugo went out to fetch fresh rolls and bread. The rolls were still warm when they got home! Max also picked up two Laugenstangen, which are soft pretzel rolls, my favorite multi-seed Vollkornbrot, poppyseed-spangled Hörnchen, and some sweet rolls.

    Then, while Max kept the baby occupied, it was time to set the table. I love this part of having people over – choosing the right tablecloth, folding the napkins just so, then arranging the food so the spread is well-balanced and bountiful. I picked a striped, colorful tablecloth that I bought years ago at a Bellora sample sale in New York and laid my mismatched French plates that I bought one by one when I lived in Paris and spent weekends trawling the flea markets. To fill in the holes on the table, I put out a jar of yellow honey, a dish of soft, sweet butter, bright stems of candy-like tomatoes, a bowl of cut-up melon, egg cups, some Greek olives, mugs for tea and a pitcher of cold water. A little vase of muscari made everything look more spring-like. All that was left, then, was to put the eggs on to boil and to make tea.

    German breakfast table

    And that's really the most wonderful thing about German breakfasts. There's hardly anything to actually cook. I don't usually think of that as a plus, but on Sundays, when I want to maximize every minute I have with my family, it's actually pretty key.

    What do you think, would you ever serve a real German breakfast to your friends?

    Posted in
    102 comments on A Real German Breakfast

  • Friday Link Love

    Picstitch-1

    It was a big week here in our household. A gleaming red Kitchenaid mixer moved in and we are all very taken with it (her?). Even the baby gives it long, dreamy stares every time he passes it. I have a lot up my sleeve with this machine that I can't wait to tell you about soon. In the meantime, all my gratitude goes to KitchenAid Germany, the generous sponsors of our red beauty.

    We've got no less than two brunches and a date at the Philharmonic planned this weekend. I'm still trying to figure out what to serve on Sunday morning that's breakfast-y, easy to prepare, delicious and kid-friendly. Any suggestions?

    Elsewhere,

    A Californian version of Bircher Müsli.

    Ever wish you could scratch-n-sniff a food magazine?

    Cocoa-Roasted Almonds, whoa.

    My favorite bagel is the thinking man's bagel.

    Oh, to live in LA where fresh flowers line the stoops and adorn pretty bowls of soup.

    Peek inside my fridge (and check out my insane artistic talent, huh? HUH?).

    How to use up that can of chipotles in adobo sitting in your fridge.

    Have a great weekend, everyone!

    Posted in
    47 comments on Friday Link Love

  • From The Trenches

    Roasted broccoli
    It was one of those days. You know, where everything is just a little off? The kind of day where you wake up tired and never seem able to catch up. Where you find yourself clock-watching until bedtime. I hate those days. Feeling exhausted and impatient, then feeling guilty about feeling exhausted and impatient, and generally just wishing that someone else could come be the mommy for the day so that I'd be free to go sit in a dark room somewhere with my eyes closed.

    Thank goodness I had a head of broccoli stashed away in the fridge. After I put Hugo to bed, I had just enough juice in me to turn on the oven, cut the broccoli apart and dress it with ground cumin, coriander, some red pepper flakes, salt and olive oil. Like this, but without the shrimp. 20 minutes later, a blissful 20 minutes spent staring slack-jawed at the screen, I had a mess of tender, high-octane broccoli for dinner.

    Some days, that's all there is. And it has to be enough.

    Spicy Roasted Broccoli with Lemon
    Serves 1 for a light dinner

    1 medium head of broccoli
    2-3 tablespoons olive oil
    Flaky salt to taste
    Red pepper flakes to taste
    1/4 teaspoon ground cumin
    1/4 teaspoon ground coriander
    1/2 lemon

    1. Heat oven to 425 degrees F. Cut the broccoli into bite-size florets. Toss with the olive oil, salt, red pepper flakes, cumin and coriander. Spread out on a sheet pan and put in the oven for 10 minutes.

    2. After 10 minutes, take the pan out and toss the broccoli around. Put the pan back in the oven for 10 additional minutes.

    3. Remove the pan from the oven and squeeze the lemon over the broccoli. Toss well and eat immediately.

    Posted in , ,
    31 comments on From The Trenches

  • Lisa Fain’s Tex-Mex Meatloaf with Chipotle-Tomato Glaze

    Tex-mex meatloaf

    There are a few truths that are universal to food blogging: 

    1. Shooting in natural light will always result in the best photos.

    2. Posts on cake always get the most comments.

    3. It is literally impossible to make meatloaf look good.

    But not every post around here can be about cake now, can it? We'd all be twenty pounds heavier with really bad teeth. And anyway, we're all smart enough to know that sometimes the homeliest things are the most delicious.

    Especially meatloaf.

    Chipotle-lime tomato sauce

    This meatloaf is particularly wonderful. It comes from Lisa Fain's Homesick Texan cookbook, which was published a few years ago, when I was deep in the misery of book-writing and not inclined to go chile-hunting in my fair city. But now, my kitchen a veritable font of chiles (chipotle! New Mexico! Arbol! Guajillo!), I'm making up for lost time. The meatloaf was the first thing I made from the book and if it's any indication of the quality of the rest of the recipes, we are in for a very good time indeed.

    Now, despite my bragging about all those chiles in my possession, I was still short of several things that Lisa calls for – fresh chorizo, for example, and cilantro and tortilla chips. I didn't even have Worcestershire sauce. But I did have Sicilian colatura, which is also made from anchovies, so I used that instead. Even without the chorizo and with boring old breadcrumbs instead of crushed tortilla chips, this meatloaf was fantastic. Exploding with unexpected flavors.

    But the very best part of the recipe? The tomato-chipotle glaze that Lisa has you slather on top of the meatloaf twice – once before baking and once almost at the end. She spikes the glaze with lime juice and adds allspice, and as it concentrates in the heat of the oven, it becomes incredibly tangy and spicy and rich. It's better than ketchup and if you know me at all, this is saying something. (I could eat it with a spoon.) In the days after I made the meatloaf, when I'd unpack it from its foil pouch and slice off a piece for lunch, I kept wishing I'd made more of the glaze for slathering and sandwich-making.

    In fact, I think that what I really need to do is just make a double batch of the glaze, reduce it in the oven, and then keep it around for all sorts of things, not just this meatloaf. Spreading on burgers, dolloping on fried rice, heck, even just eating with a spoon.

    Lisa Fain's Tex-Mex Meatloaf with Chipotle-Tomato Glaze
    From The Homesick Texan Cookbook
    Serves 6

    For the glaze
    1 cup crushed canned tomatoes 
    1 to 2 canned chipotles in adobo
    2 tablespoons lime juice
    1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
    2 cloves garlic
    Salt

    For the meatloaf:
    1/2 tablespoon vegetable oil
    1/4 small yellow onion, finely chopped
    2 cloves garlic, finely minced
    1 1/2 pounds lean ground beef
    1/2 pound fresh chorizo, removed from casings (I left this out)
    1/4 cup chopped cilantro (I left this out)
    2 large eggs
    1 cup finely ground tortilla chips, crackers, or breadcrumbs
    1 teaspoon dried oregano
    1 teaspoon ground cumin
    1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce (or colatura or Asian fish sauce)
    1 teaspoon black pepper
    Salt to taste

    1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line a large baking sheet with greased foil.

    2. To make the glaze, combine all ingredients except salt in a blender or food processor and puree. Add salt to taste.

    3. To make the meat loaf, heat oil in a medium skillet over medium-low heat. Add the onion and cook uncovered for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add garlic and salt and cook 30 seconds more.

    4. Scrape the onion mixture into a large bowl. Add the remaining ingredients to the bowl and mix thoroughly by hand.

    5. Form the meat mixture into a loaf and place on the baking sheet. Spread half the tomato-chipotle glaze on top of the meatloaf. Place in the oven and bake 50 minutes.

    6. Remove from the oven and spread the remaining glaze on top. Put back in the oven for 10 additional minutes. Remove meatloaf from the oven and let sit 15 minutes. Slice with a serrated knife and serve. 

    Posted in , ,
    27 comments on Lisa Fain’s Tex-Mex Meatloaf with Chipotle-Tomato Glaze

  • Friday Link Love

      Picstitch(2)

    Just me or did this week fly by? We had delicious little bunnies for Easter, made out of Quark-enriched yeast dough and pearl-sugar sprinkled yeast dough with raisins for eyes. I finally got around to reading Not Becoming My Mother, which just about broke my heart. And Hugo, doing his best to grow his hair out like Justin Bieber, discovered the tastiness of his mother's nose. We're going into an extreme cozy zone this weekend, early bedtimes and all (though, ahem, there will also be much blood, guts and incest since we have three more episodes to go in the second season of Game of Thrones hoooo boy I am so obsessed oh my goodness), and I can't wait.

    Elsewhere,

    Have you ever baked with black cocoa powder? (I'd never even heard of it!)

    Tami Taylor loves caviar!

    Speaking of breakfast inspiration, this granola includes millet, delicious millet.

    Such good ideas for those of us who work from home.

    I can't stop looking at these.

    5 ingredients, 10 minutes – a master list.

    This is spinach pie which has died and gone to heaven.

    Wish I could taste this maple syrup.

    The perfect poached egg (via Forty-Sixth at Grace)

     

    Have a wonderful weekend, folks!

    Posted in
    24 comments on Friday Link Love

  • Cooking for Hugo: Baby Breakfast Ideas

    DSC_8682

    Today I'd love to talk about baby breakfasts. The first meal of the day is such an important one and also such a fun one – your baby is (hopefully) well-rested and happy to start the day and probably already has some morning milk in his little belly and therefore isn't freaking out with hunger. The best time to experiment with new foods, I think. But am I alone in sometimes feeling uninspired about what to make?

    (more…)

    Posted in ,
    71 comments on Cooking for Hugo: Baby Breakfast Ideas

  • Yotam Ottolenghi’s Crisp Couscous and Saffron Cakes

    Crisp couscous saffron cakes

    I always forget about couscous. It's such a good thing to have around and yet, I don't know, I feel like I overdosed on those Near East packages in college and then I owned a few Paula Wolfert books on Moroccan cooking and was ashamed to have ever even thought about instant couscous, let alone eaten it, and then I moved back to Berlin, where couscous is still relatively exotic, and so I end up using far more rice and millet and quinoa and bulgur than I ever do couscous. Which is too bad, because couscous is good! And after all this time, it feels fresh and delicious all over again.

    Last weekend, I served it with a Moroccan vegetable stew and then this weekend, after seeing this article by Yotam Ottolenghi and deciding 30 nanoseconds later that that was how I was going to use up the box of couscous I had in the pantry, I made saffron-flavored, feta-and-raisin-stuffed, mint-flecked couscous cakes. Yes, they were just as good as they sounded, better even. And, well, the moral of this story is that I'll never go couscous-less again.

    Couscous saffron mixture

    It's silly how easy these cakelets are. All you do is pour boiling water over some saffron and couscous and while the water is plumping the couscous, you gather everything else: feta, some eggs, some sliced chives or mint (I used mint), yogurt. And then, if you're lucky enough to have barberries, you soak them in a sugar syrup to soften their sour bite. If you don't have barberries, you can use currants soaked in lemon juice – I used raisins and they were just fine. You mix all of these lovely little things into the saffron couscous until it's a thick and creamy homogenous mass. Then you portion out little rounds and fry them up – I used olive oil in a nonstick pan, the original recipe calls for butter.

    I slid each batch of cakes onto a plate as they finished and we ate them piping hot and then fried more and ate more and fried more and so on. They were so good, so crisp and soft at once, with little sweet-salty pockets of cheese and raisins and the haunting flavor of mint and saffron giving them a sophisticated edge. Afterwards, Max asked me very solemnly to make them again. Each week. He never, ever does that.

    By the way, I experimented in flattening some of the cakes with the spatula, but I would advise you to leave the cakes plump – flattening them takes away some of their deliciousness, if you can believe it, and the ratio of crisp to soft gets thrown off balance.

    Frying couscous cakes

    Yotam Ottolenghi tells you to eat these with a tomato chutney, which sounds like it'd be lovely. We were too hungry to do anything but pop them in our mouths just as they were, but Max ate the leftovers later with some incendiary Mexican hot sauce and declared them delicious. So, do as you like: sauce them or don't, just make sure you make these. They'll be a staple at your table in no time, too, I'm sure.

    (Warning: the recipe below is in metric. It was originally published in an English newspaper. If you don't already own a kitchen scale (Salter is a great brand, for example), please consider adding one to your arsenal.)

    Yotam Ottolenghi's Crisp Couscous and Saffron Cakes
    Makes about 20 patties
    Note: If you can't find barberries, substitute currants or raisins and soak them in lemon juice instead of the sugar syrup.

    ½ teaspoon saffron threads
    275 grams couscous
    30 grams barberries
    4 tablespoons sugar
    1 lemon (only if using currants or raisins instead of barberries)
    140 grams plain whole milk yogurt
    2 large eggs, lightly beaten
    A handful fresh chives or fresh mint, chopped
    100 grams feta, crumbled into small pieces
    Salt and black pepper
    About 4 tablespoons clarified butter or olive oil

    1. Put the saffron in a large bowl and pour over 500 milliliters of boiling water. Leave to infuse for a few minutes, then add the couscous. Stir with a fork, cover the bowl with a dishtowel and let stand for 15 minutes.

    2. Meanwhile, if using the barberries, put them and the sugar in a small saucepan. Add 120 milliliters of water, bring to a light simmer, stir to dissolve the sugar and remove from the heat. Once cool, drain the barberries and dry on kitchen paper. If using currants or raisins (see Note), put them in a bowl and cover them with the juice of one lemon.

    3. Fluff up the couscous with a fork, then add the yogurt, eggs, chives or mint, feta, barberries or currants, and salt and pepper to taste. Mix well and then shape into approximately 20 firm round patties about 1.5 centimeters (1 inch) thick.

    4. Heat two tablespoons of clarified butter or oil in a large frying pan on medium-high heat. Lower the heat to medium and fry the patties in batches, adding more butter or oil as needed. Cook each batch for five minutes, turning once, until crisp and golden-brown. Transfer to a plate lined with paper towel. Serve at once, while they're still warm.

    Posted in ,
    30 comments on Yotam Ottolenghi’s Crisp Couscous and Saffron Cakes

  • Friday Link Love

    Picstitch(1)
    Today is a holiday here and the city is quiet, quiet, quiet and feels totally empty. We have a visitor from Puglia in town, so there were sweet olives and fresh braids of mozzarella for lunch and ciambelline di Pasqua coated in thick sugar icing for dessert. It's certainly the coldest Easter I can remember, but I think I've stopped caring about all the snow. Or maybe I'm just sick of complaining about it! Ha.

    In other news, Hugo continues his nap strike and we are starting to come to our wit's end. Thank goodness for grandparents who will drop everything to babysit so that we can go out and have dinner and at least two whole drinks tonight (at this place, which, Berliners, is delicious).

    Photos above from my Instagram account – a sunset that hints of good weather to come, roasted chicken breast for dinners to come, a teeny, tiny, pale green egg from Hugo's great-grandparents in Bavaria, and the little man himself, moments after feasting on my computer cable. (Best mom ever!)

    Elsewhere,

    I've never been big on sweet potato fries, but these (cornmeal-crusted!) look like they will change my mind.

    The shortest documentary to be nominated for an Oscar is about…making guacamole? Sort of. (Via My Little Expat Kitchen)

    You should know about this salad I made twice this past week. It's perfect.

    This book sounds right up our collective alleys, no?

    Soup inspiration (the third-to-last particularly).

    Such beautiful photography on Happyolks.

    I was just sent a copy of this stunning cookbook and have not closed the covers since.

    Malted. Buttermilk. Biscuits. (Tim, you complete me.)

    And updated to add: Rifka tells us how to make homemade masala dosas! I am so excited.

    Have a great weekend, folks!

    Posted in
    9 comments on Friday Link Love