Site Title

How to Roast Peppers

May 17, 2008

Okay, everyone, tutorial time! Gather 'round, gather 'round.

I somewhat blithely assumed in this post that you all knew how to roast peppers. But it was brought to my attention after the fact that perhaps a little guidance would be appreciated and I'm happy to oblige. Plus, I'm on a one-woman mission to rid the world of the misconception that "roasting" bell peppers over a gas flame is somehow an acceptable substitute for when you think you don't have time for roasting peppers in the oven.

Ahem. Not acceptable. Not at all. At least not in this household.

Roasting a pepper held with tongs over an open flame simply chars the outside of the pepper. This is fine if you like eating semi-raw peppers that are singed in spots, but it's not fine if your goal is to get a silky-soft pepper that slumps on a plate, sweet and aromatic. To achieve that, follow these directions:

1. Preheat your oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. While the oven is preheating, line a half-sheet pan with aluminum foil. Wash 4 bell peppers. (I use exclusively red and yellow peppers. I suppose I could be convinced to try the orange ones every once in a blue moon. But you could not pay me to eat green ones. No way. No how.) Leave their stems on, you'll use them as little handles later in the roasting process. Place the four peppers on the sheet, leaving a bit of space between them. Place the sheet in the oven.

2. Every 20 minutes, open the oven and, working quickly, turn the peppers using their stems, so that they aren't lying on the same side throughout the entire roasting period. You'll notice each time you move the peppers that their skin has started to wrinkle and blister, even turning brown and puffing up in spots. Try to make sure that the peppers rotate evenly throughout the process.

3. After an hour, your home will be redolent with the scent of roasting peppers. People will be knocking on your door and asking if they can come over for dinner. You will bask in the glow of roasting success. Along with a proper roasted potato, little can make you feel as capable in the kitchen as a beautifully roasted pepper. Open the oven and check the peppers. They should be evenly browned and blistered, collapsing in on themselves a bit. Place the sheet on a cooling rack and let the peppers cool. Don't try to fiddle with them just yet – the liquid inside the peppers is amazingly hot, even for someone with asbestos fingers like myself. Be patient.

4. When the peppers have cooled for about 20 to 30 minute, start to peel them. The peel should generally slip right off, but the peppers themselves will be quite slippery, so you'll need to do this with some care. I like to gently split the peppers and work with large sections at a time, simultaneously dumping out any of the interior liquid and, of course, ridding the peppers of all their seeds. This can get messy – I suggest working over a lipped cutting board and having a clean plate ready for the cleaned, peeled pepper segments.

So! You've got yourself a nice clean plate filled with roasted peppers: now what?

Cut them into strips and lay them in small casserole dish. Sprinkle them liberally with chopped flat-leaf parsley, soaked and drained salted capers, good-quality olive oil, and a generous pinch of coarse salt. Eat with crusty bread. (If you're feeling adventurous, add to this dish a small handful of slivered, oil-cured black olives and a few anchovies. Some folks even like adding a layer of homemade breadcrumbs.) This is a classic Italian dish and should be committed to memory. It improves if left to sit and stew together for an hour or two.

I suppose it should be noted that these peppers are also far, far superior to any roasted pepper that comes in a jar at the supermarket. Those will never do.
Liz Pearson’s Yogurt-Rubbed Roast Chicken with Red Pepper Sauce

May 12, 2008

Let's start things off with a big, happy, declarative statement, shall we? It's Monday and it's awful out and despite being almost mid-May, we're dealing with March-like winds and rain instead of flowers and sunshine. I need something to cheer me up, perhaps you do, too, and I'm thinking this might just do the trick:

I may have found my new favorite way to roast chicken.

There. Things feel like they're looking up already, wouldn't you agree?

I'll always love the high-heat, Judy-Rodgers sanctioned way of roasting chicken, but the last time I did that we ended up having to live with the stench of scorched chicken fat in our apartment for nigh on a week. Since then, I've been banned from preparing chicken that way. Apparently, until we have a little elf living with us whose sole purpose is to run around silently behind me, cleaning up in the wake of my cooking endeavors and periodically scrubbing the inside of the oven (and while little elf is at it, also mopping), I won't be roasting at high heat again.

(Tragic, I know. How do I stand it?)

But over the weekend I found myself repeatedly coming back to a recipe printed in the LA Times a few weeks ago that has you stir Greek yogurt together with some herbs and spices and then massage big handfuls of the stuff onto (and into) a chicken, before letting it marinate for an hour and then roasting it at relatively average heat until cooked through.

See, doesn't that sound good? Something about spiced yogurt and marinating chicken… and I'm bewitched all over again.

Yogurt tenderizes chicken, don't you know, and the herbs and spices infuse the meat subtly. The marinating time and then the relatively long, slow roasting ensure an incredibly juicy bird. And to gild the lily – but this gilding I found absolutely necessary – the recipe has you roast shallots and red peppers beneath the chicken. After the roast is done, you gingerly peel the peppers (watch your fingers, they'll be hot!) and then puree them with the shallots and a disc of puckery goat cheese into an ochre-tinged sauce.

The original recipe has you do a fancy pan sauce with drippings and stock and flour and whisking, but is it a surprise to any of you at this point that I was far too lazy to follow suit? It was late, we were hungry, and that burnished bird was sitting on its platter making our stomachs growl. So I scraped up the pan drippings, separated the fat as best I could and dumped the drippings into the creamy sauce before whizzing it one last time.

And it was fabulous. Sweet and savory and with the faint funk of goat cheese about it. We slathered the sauce onto our forkfuls of chicken, dragged the chicken through great puddles of the stuff on our plates. If we hadn't been in the presence of dignified company, I might have even taken a spoon to the bowl. Best of all, while the chicken disappeared in a flash, there's sauce to last us another night at least.

I'm planning on using this yogurt-marinade technique over and over again – committing it to memory, even handing it over to the lamination files, if you will! The chicken was dreamily moist and juicy and would make fantastic leftovers.

This is the perfect Sunday supper – one you can start as the sun starts its slow descent in the late afternoon and can have on the table by the time the light is gone, but the birds are still out doing their early evening calls. I love this time of day in spring and especially where we live now, where we can actually hear the birds over the sounds of the city. If I go out on the balcony, I almost feel like I'm back in Berlin again – close enough to the city that I see the sunlight sparking off the buildings in Manhattan, but far enough away that I hear more birds than sirens; birds and the rustling of leaves in the trees around our building.

And there we go! Suddenly this cold, gray day doesn't seem so bad anymore. I have red pepper sauce, Ben, and a movie waiting for me (how to choose: Scarface on DVD or Iron Man at the theater?).

Happy Monday, folks. I hope it's a good week for you all.

Yogurt-Rubbed Roast Chicken with Red Pepper Sauce
Serves 3 to 4
Note: I made a half-recipe – the original makes two birds, and enough sauce to last for a week's worth of sandwiches, I think. Also, I omitted the steps and ingredients for the pan sauce. Click here for the original.

1/2 cup plain Greek-style yogurt
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 1/2 teaspoons dry mustard
1 1/2 teaspoons chopped thyme
1 teaspoon ground coriander
Kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1 (3- to 3 1/2 -pound) chicken
1/2 pound (about 8) shallots, peeled and left whole
3 carrots, peeled and cut into chunks
2 red bell peppers, halved, cored and quartered
1 2-ounce piece goat cheese, softened

1. In a small bowl, stir together the yogurt, 1 tablespoon of the olive oil, the dry mustard, thyme, coriander, 2 teaspoons salt and 1/4 teaspoon pepper. Loosen the skin around the breasts and thighs, then rub both chicken all over (beneath the skin and inside the cavity, too) with the yogurt mixture. Refrigerate the chicken, uncovered, for 1 hour.

2. Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Place the shallots, carrots, peppers, the remaining 2 tablespoons of olive oil, and salt and pepper to taste into a large roasting pan and toss well. Arrange a rack over the vegetables.

3. Arrange the chicken on the rack, breast-side up, and roast, basting occasionally with pan juices, until the vegetables are very tender and the chicken is deep golden brown and cooked through, 1 1/2 to 2 hours. Transfer the chicken to a large platter and tent with foil; set aside.

4. Drain the pan drippings into a bowl, then skim off and discard the fat; set aside.

5. Remove and discard the skin from the peppers (it should peel off fairly easily), then transfer them to a food processor. Add half the shallots and pulse until roughly chopped. Add the goat cheese, salt and pepper to taste, and pan drippings and puree until smooth.

6. Carve the chicken and transfer to plates. Spoon 1 to 2 tablespoons of the red pepper and goat cheese sauce over each serving and serve with the remaining roasted shallots and carrots on the side.
Role Reversal

May 11, 2008

Isn’t that the cutest little globe you ever did see? (Muir Glen tomato can standing there for size comparison.) I found it this morning at the Brooklyn Flea and have decided it is already my most favorite possession. I might snuggle with it tonight, in bed. Little globe! I think I love you.

Okay! Moving on. As I type, a chicken is marinating in spiced yogurt in the fridge. It will be our dinner tonight and I have high hopes for it. Let’s all hope there is good news to report tomorrow. In the meantime, however, I have to tell you about an idea I had earlier, when I was sorting through some more recipe print-outs (unfiled! loose-leaf! gah!) and was suddenly overcome with a desire to Purge! Purge! Purge! Because, honestly, people, sometimes the recipe collecting feels a bit out of hand. I had a hard little talk with myself (sotto voce, natch) and then plucked out a nice wee stack of recipes I know that I will never – in my heart of hearts – make. Ever. I marched them out to the recycling bin, dropped them down with a satisfying thwap, and felt all clean and good for a few minutes.

Um. And then. I felt sort of bad! (I clearly need to get out more.)

So I had an idea: What if I told you folks what those abandoned, discarded recipes are and if any of you are enterprising folks or just have different taste than me, you send me an email or leave me a comment telling me which recipe you’d like to make, and then I send that recipe over to you and you make it and tell me/us all about it? Doesn’t that sound like fun? Or am I totally losing my mind?

I don’t mean to be entirely pathetic, but I actually went back to the recycling bin and pulled the recipes out. They’re sitting here now, looking up at me dolefully and I’m feeling sort of foolish. So for that reason alone, don’t let me lose face, intrepid readers and cooks! Maybe there’s one in here for you right now! Let’s play.

1. ~~Pommes Dauphine~~ taken!
2. ~~Duck Rillettes~~ taken!
3. ~~Salad of Yellowfin Tuna Confit with Cannellini Beans~~ taken!
4. ~~Golden Apple Triangles~~ taken!
5. ~~Pumpkin Pots de Creme with Amaretti-Ginger Crunch~~ taken!
6. ~~Caramel Coulant~~ – taken!
7. ~~Pumpkin Panna Cotta~~ – taken!
8. ~~Overnight Coffee Cake (with variations!)~~ taken!
Rancho Gordo’s Giant White Lima Beans

May 6, 2008

My beans have arrived! With their cheeky packaging and glossy little hulls, they are simply gorgeous. Giant white limas, Good Mother Stallards, Ojo de Cabras, and Christmas limas. Speckled and smooth and a delight to behold, I've quite literally not been this excited about something in my kitchen in a long time.

Ben and I had a plate of gigantes in Astoria this winter, so good we licked the plate clean, so I thought I'd just scrounge up a recipe for that stewy Greek dish, fragrant with tomatoes (and sometimes polluted by dill). But then I got sidetracked by a dish from Diane Kochilas's book on meze that combined the giant limas with roasted peppers and promptly changed my mind. I guess I sometimes have a short attention span.

I did a lot of things differently from the original recipe, which didn't seem to make much sense (1/4 pound of beans for 4 to 6 people?). I'm not sure you should necessarily attempt this on a weeknight, unless you get home far earlier than your eating partner, because it takes a little more than 2 hours to get this on the table.

But it's such a delicious pay-off. The beans are creamy, yet still pleasingly firm. The ones at the top have a chewy little crust that is browned in spots. The peppers and onions are stewy and sweet, and the vinegar gives the dish just the right amount of acidity. You could swap out the bay leaf for oregano, scattered throughout, or sage could also be a nice choice. We ate our beans with fresh slices of country bread and murmured delightedly through bites that we should eat nothing but beans and vegetables (steamed asparagus with a mustard vinaigrette) forever and evermore.

To further the conversation about sustainability and locavorism, it's true that buying Rancho Gordo beans is a double-edged sword. On one hand, you're supporting a small business that aims to keep heirloom beans alive and well and in our tummies, and that supports small farms. On the other hand, the beans are expensive (relatively speaking) and need to be shipped all the way across the country, if you live on the East Coast. Not exactly great for the environment.

I loved these beans and I can't wait to cook the rest of them, but I'm not sure how often I'll be able to justify ordering them. What do you think, readers? Am I overthinking? Not doing enough? And all that heavy stuff aside, what else should I be doing with beans? Recipes, please! Links! Ideas! We have a lot of beans to get through.

Giant Lima Beans with Roasted Peppers
Serves 2 amply as a main course

1/2 pound giant white lima beans
5 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 yellow onion, finely chopped
1 large garlic clove, finely chopped
2 roasted red bell peppers
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
1 bay leaf
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar, to taste

1. Put the beans in a pot with ample water to cover (enough to come about 3 inches above the beans). Let sit for half an hour. Bring to a boil over high heat, then reduce the flame to low and simmer the beans for approximately 1 hour, or until al dente. About 15 minutes before removing the beans from the heat, season with salt. Drain and reserve the boiling liquid.

2. As the beans simmer, heat the 3 tablespoons olive oil in large skillet over medium heat, and sauté the onion and garlic until translucent, about 5 minutes. Remove the peppers from their oil and finely chop. Add them to the onions and garlic, and stir over medium heat for about 3 minutes to meld the flavors a little. Remove from the heat and add the beans to the pepper mixture. Season with salt and pepper to taste, and stir gently to combine.

3. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Scrape the bean mixture in an ovenproof glass or ceramic baking dish. Add about 1/2 cup of the reserved bean cooking liquid. Drizzle 2 tablespoons olive oil over the beans. Tuck a bay leaf into the center of the dish, covering the leaf well with the beans. Cover the dish and bake for about 45 minutes to 1 hour, or until the beans are very tender and their centers creamy.

4. Five minutes before the beans come out of the oven, pour in the vinegar. Remove from the oven and serve. You can let the beans cool to room temperature as well and serve the next day.
Mario Batali’s Pappardelle with Peas and Parmesan

April 29, 2008

Oh, how I love thee, Internet.

Shall I count the ways?

I saw this recipe in a magazine – I can't remember which one – like, almost 10 years ago or something. Way before this blog was a twinkle in my eye and way before I even really understood what the Internet was all about. (Er – not that I now have much of a clue, but still. Fiber optic cables! Coal-fired power stations! Personal websites! I am way more informed.) I clipped it and made it and filed it away and then totally forgot about it, only to have an inquisitive reader ask me about it recently (hi, Charlotte!) because she'd read a comment I left on Adam's blog two years ago in which I waxed rhapsodic about said pasta.

So! I set myself to digging among my recipe clippings. It embarrasses me slightly that it took me, a somewhat neurotically organized person, more than ten minutes to find the darn thing. In fact, it took me more like a week.* A week in which I desperately emailed Adam (Hadn't I emailed him the recipe? Apparently, I had not.) and had to slowly face up to the fact that perhaps my organizational skills weren't quite what I imagined them to be.

(Sob!)

And then, of course, ten minutes after telling myself this, I found the recipe, glued sweetly and snugly into some binder page, exactly where it should have been, obviously.

After all that effort, I was hungry and, frankly, a little curious. Wouldn't it be fun to see how the recipe stood up, after hiding out for so long? I marched myself out to the store, bought a pound of fettucine and got to work.

And it is, just as you might have already imagined from the words "Mario", "Batali", and, oh, perhaps "Pappardelle", "Peas", and "Parmesan", quite tasty. Peas and mint are a match made in heaven, of course, and when you throw a silky tangle of fettucine into the mix and the long strands get all green and velvety from the pea puree and sweet-salty from the honey and Parmigiano, well then, you can imagine your delight at dinner. But there are a few things I have to note, because I strayed from the original recipe ever-so-slightly, and I think you should, too.

First of all, watch it with the honey, folks. Mario asks for two entire tablespoons of the stuff, but this makes the dish brazenly sweet instead of delicately nuanced and I think we can all agree that nuance is better than in-your-face sweetness, no? Then, he also says you need an entire stick of butter. And you know, if you're into that kind of thing, by all means toss the whole stick in there. But this dish can do with a whole lot less of the stuff. Also, one more thing, you need to loosen the sauce with pasta water before you toss it with the pappardelle, otherwise you lose precious minutes trying to coat the pasta properly, so that by the time you do and bring it to the table, it's well on its way to being lukewarm. And we all know there is nothing worse than lukewarm pasta.

(Don't we? DON'T WE? Sheesh.)

Anyway, this is the story of the little recipe that could, powered by the Internet – it made it into a magazine, into a binder, into a comment section, into an email, and now finally, out to you all. May you all like it as much as I do.

*Yes, I tried Googling it, but heavens to Betsy, this recipe was nowhere to be found online. So now it is. Thank God for blogs, wouldn't you say?

Pappardelle with Peas and Parmesan
Serves 8 as an appetizer or 4 as a main course

4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 medium Spanish onion, chopped fine
1 tablespoon wildflower honey
3 cups fresh shucked peas (or frozen)
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 pound fresh homemade pappardelle or 1 pound dried fettucine
1 cup freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano
1/2 cup packed fresh mint leaves, torn in half

1. In a large saute pan, heat the oil until it is just smoking. Add the onion, honey, and 2 cups of the peas, and saute until softened and cooked through, about 10 to 12 minutes.

2. Place peas in a food processor and pulse until coarsely pureed, season generously with salt and pepper, and set aside.

3. Bring 6 quarts of water to a boil and add 2 tablespoons salt. Melt the butter in the saute pan, add the remaining peas, and cook slowly until just softened, 4 to 5 minutes. Add the pea puree to the whole peas and set aside.

4. Just before the pasta is done, pour a ladle of the starchy cooking water into the pan with the pea puree and stir to loosen the sauce. Cook the pasta until al dente and drain well, reserving more of the pasta water. Immediately toss the pasta into the pan with the pea mixture and place over medium heat. Stir gently to mix well, adding a little pasta water to achieve the correct texture, not too dry and not too wet – the noodles should be dressed like the greens of a salad. Add the cheese and mint leaves, and toss to combine. Serve immediately.
The Wednesday Chef on The FN Dish

April 28, 2008

Adam, the intrepid Amateur Gourmet, rustled up a few of us for a little discussion on food blogging the other day. If you’re interested in starting your own food blog or just want to see me talk with my hands (grandfather in grave, rolling over), have a look!
Madhur Jaffrey’s Baked Cod in Yogurt Sauce

April 22, 2008

I'm starting to feel discouraged. The forces of food politics, nutrition and food safety, and environmental responsibility are feeling insurmountable these days. First, I've spent far too much time lately parsing the various charts on fish, trying to find some overlap. The fish we eat can't have too much mercury, but it also has to be fished sustainably. The people worried about mercury have one chart, the people worried about overfishing and stock depletion have another chart, and I, the concerned consumer, am lost in the middle.

And then there's the debate about Bisphenol-A. We don't drink much out of plastic bottles, so we're okay on that front, but people, we probably go through 5 cans of tomatoes a week. (As for beans, this spurred me to place a long-awaited-and-dithered-about 4-pound order for dried beans with Rancho Gordo, which has me – dork that I am – quite excited.) A question that came to me in the night as I was wondering about how to circumvent the liners of tin cans was: if the leaching Bisphenol-A in those cans is potentially cancerous, but the lycopene in the canned tomatoes is so cancer-preventing, won't those two cancel each other out? Do I have a doctor/medical researcher in the audience? Anyone?

Because my alternative right now is to drive into the city to Buon Italia this weekend and buy 24 units of bottled tomatoes and store them in our closet, like paranoid schizophrenics. (Yes, I briefly contemplated buying 50 pounds of tomatoes this summer and processing/bottling them myself, but then decided that sort of lunacy can only go so far before it threatens to swallow me whole. I've got exactly 2 square feet of counter space, folks. So, no to that.)

Sigh.

Meanwhile, we're also trying to eat less meat and more vegetables. Our CSA hasn't started up yet and the Greenmarket is just barely green right now, with expensive baby lettuces the only springtime option at the moment. Our recent tax bill makes those kinds of purchases somewhat outside the realm of daily possibility, but the alternative – rotting, limp, and pallid produce at our local grocer – isn't much better. Then, of course, the moment I start to complain about this I want to punch myself squarely in the face, because food shortages are looming the world over, not to speak of general impoverishment and hunger, and am I really whingeing about the fact that we have abundant food that's not entirely up to my (picky, though I prefer to say exacting) standards at our disposal?

Sigh and double sigh.

I'm not quite sure how to tie this neatly into a quick report on a wonderful fish bake I made from Jill Santopietro's fantastic round-up of recipes with yogurt, except that it was while trying to figure out what to substitute for Madhur Jaffrey's haddock (according to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, it's to be avoided, though hook-and-line caught haddock is okay) that I really started getting frustrated. Cod is a good substitute for haddock in terms of taste and texture, and it's low in mercury, but if it's wild-caught and/or from the Atlantic, then it's a bad choice in terms of sustainability. I tried to engage the fish guy at Whole Foods who mostly just looked bored, and ended up taking my chances with the cod they had on display.

This is a lovely, simple recipe – you fry up a few onions and then layer plump, white fillets of fish on top of them in a baking dish before topping the fish with a thick, creamy coat of spiced yogurt that looks and feels as lush as cake frosting. A pass in the oven renders the fish incredibly moist and tender, while the yogurt topping subtly infuses the fish with exotic warmth. If you're afraid of cooking fish, this is the dish for you. If you're afraid of cooking Indian food, this is the dish for you. If you're afraid of spending more then 15 minutes on prep work for dinner, this is the dish for you. The original recipe has you pour off and reduce the watery liquid exuded from the fish after baking and then enrich that sauce with butter, but I skipped that step, simply pouring off the watery juices and serving the yogurt-topped fish with rice and some steamed broccoli.

Ben and my mother, visiting from Europe, couldn't stop telling me how good it was and I'd have to agree. It was a wholesome, hearty meal that at least temporarily assuaged my anxiety about feeding myself and the ones I love safely and well. Don't worry if you don't have Greek yogurt at your disposal – just use regular whole-milk yogurt that you first drain in a thin-meshed sieve for an hour or so. (Oh, and if you're wondering, the fish, despite being delicious, was also absolutely hideous to photograph. I tried, I really did, but posting the results of that particular photo shoot would have done more harm than good, I think.)

Cod Baked in a Yogurt Sauce
Serves 4 to 6

3 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 medium onions, cut into 1/8-inch slices
2 pounds thick fillets cod
2 cups Greek yogurt
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 teaspoon sugar
Salt and coarsely ground black pepper
2 teaspoons ground cumin
2 tablespoons ground coriander
¼ teaspoon garam masala
¾ teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon grated fresh ginger
3 tablespoons unsalted cold butter, cubed (optional)

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. In a large skillet, heat 2 tablespoons of the oil. When hot, add the onions and cook over medium until translucent, 5 minutes. Season with salt and pepper and transfer to a baking dish just large enough to hold the fish in a single layer. Cut the fish fillets crosswise into 2-by-3-inch pieces and lay them over the onions.

2. In a large bowl, whisk together the yogurt, lemon juice, sugar, 1 ½ teaspoons salt, ¼ teaspoon pepper, cumin, coriander, garam masala, cayenne and ginger. Whisk in the remaining 1 tablespoon oil. Pour sauce over the fish, tucking some under each piece. Cover with foil and bake until the fish is just cooked through, 30 to 40 minutes.

3. Pour the liquid from the baking dish into a small saucepan; keep fish warm. (The sauce will look separated.) If you'd like to make an extra sauce, bring the sauce to a boil and reduce it by half. Remove from heat. Whisk in the butter, a few cubes at a time. Season to taste with salt and pepper and pour over the fish.
I Can See It in My Dreams

April 21, 2008

What can I say that hasn't been said before? I went to New Orleans and I fell in love. I wasn't expecting to, but I did. I'm back at my desk in New York now and all I keep thinking about is how much I want to be back there again, smelling that sweet, soft air. It got me, wrapped itself around me, and now I don't want it to let me go. When can I go back? I have so much more to see and do.

Okay, a quick report. It turns out that while Central Grocery may indeed have the city's best muffaletta, I simply don't like muffaletta. I did, however, like sitting by the Mississippi eating said sandwich and thinking about Mark Twain and Italy and you, dear readers. It also turns out that if you think you are above some old tradition of eating fried dough squares with coffee, you should get over yourself right quick, because revered traditions exist for a good reason. (Ninny.) So yes, I loved Cafe du Monde. It really is worth the whopping $1.82 you'll spend to get three puffy beignets covered in what seems like an excessive amount of powdered sugar. You'll discover that they're yeasty and delicious and chewy and crisp and, improbably, not too sweet at all. Huh.

Dinner at Cochon was indeed fantastic, so thank you all for the recommendation (I loved the pork cheeks and the pickled green tomatoes). I also have it on good authority from Russ Parsons that if you go to Cochon, you should not leave before ordering the Catdaddy Moonshine to end the meal (sadly, I didn't know about it until after my meal there).

If you go to New Orleans, get up early on a Saturday morning and get yourself over to the corner of Girod and Magazine Streets to the Crescent City Farmer's Market. It's small and cozy – contained in just one little parking lot – but making a loop or two around the market, smelling fresh, bright shrimp and seeing strawberries glow in their pint baskets, is an absolutely lovely way to spend the morning. Plus, you have to eat breakfast, right? Well, some genius set up a couple of hot griddles there and cooks sweet and savory pancakes, so once you've had enough produce fondling, you can sit down, listen to gypsy jazz and tuck in. If you aren't so charmed that you have to wipe the grin off your face in order to speak, I will be very surprised.

A shrimp po' boy at Parkway, foie-stuffed rabbit at Bayona, and an old-fashioned meal at Antoine's – I'm ready for a week of salads and early-morning gym visits. But I'm also ready to start planning a return trip. All I want to do is sit by the open window on a streetcar as it rumbles down the street, feel that gentle New Orleans air brush my face and hair, and ride, ride, ride.

To see more of the photos that I took there, click here.
An Update

April 16, 2008

Uh…

Food mill, bread knife – wha?

Instead I came home with:

1. A baking sheet to replace the wonky, floppy one I never use because I hate it.
2. A little peeler to simulate a mandoline (I saw Jamie Oliver do it).
3. A magnetic knife rack because we have all of our knives lying on top of each other in a drawer, and now you know my secret shame.
4. A John Boos board because it was $7.99 (!).

Also, the sardines: your recipes and ideas were good, but in the end I wanted my first tin to be simple and straightforward. I smeared a Triscuit with a little whole-grain mustard, piled a small filet on top, and popped it in my mouth. Simply delicious. Though the soft little spine and the miniscule organs (and there definitely were some) floating about in the tin were something to get used to. I’ll be experimenting with your ideas, though they’ll have to wait for those nights when Ben isn’t home – apparently his ban extends to all small fish in cans. Fine! More omega-3 fatty acids for me.

Ralph’s suggestion sounded really good: "A recipe for sardines (I like the oil-packed better) I love is
wrapping them in a Boston lettuce leaf after sprinkling them with a
dressing made of chopped shallots, lemongrass, garlic, chili, nam pla
and lime juice."
The Tasting Room’s Cheesecake

April 7, 2008

I always thought cheesecake was one of those inarguably beloved foods, like expertly prepared French fries or the perfect baguette or the tender oysters of a roast chicken, plucked delicately from the carcass. But in a highly unscientific study I did a few weeks ago, I discovered something quite to the contrary. It turns out that more people dislike cheesecake than like it.

I know, earth-shattering, right?

The complaints all seemed to be the same. Too rich, too heavy, too much. To the people whom I polled, cheesecake was a thing of the past. And once I turned the poll on myself, I realized I wasn't exactly cheesecake's biggest advocate. Give me German Kaesekuchen or Italian torta di ricotta over a slice of cheesecake any day. Airy, refreshingly sour, and – most importantly – not a leaden brick sinking in my stomach, those cakes feature Quark and ricotta, relatively light fresh cheeses when compared to our dependably stodgy cream cheese.

But my compulsive recipe-clipping led me to a cheesecake recipe from all the way back in another lifetime – February 2001 – when Amanda Hesser wrote about a cheesecake from New York City's Tasting Room restaurant. Her description, of a cheesecake akin to a wedge-shaped marshmallow, is what made me stop and think twice. I simply had to try it.

The filling of the cake is quite straightforward: cream cheese and vanilla, folded into a shiny, billowy mass of beaten meringue. You pour this ambrosial, cloudlike mixture into an almond crust and bake it in the oven. There's no water bath, which means that the cheesecake will probably crack. Not at first (ah, hubris), so you'll think you're in the clear, but as it cools, oh man, it can get ugly. Never mind. Just tell yourself it's rustic that way. Oh, and in any case, the recipe has you cover the top of the cheesecake with vanilla-flavored, sugared sour cream for another run in the oven. I assume this is meant to mask some of that crackage, but it can also backfire, leading to a cheesecake that practically looks like a crucifixion in cheese.

(Quite fitting, that, since this was my contribution to our Easter lunch with our friends upstairs.)

But when you cut into it, all thoughts of cracks and ugliness disappear. What you're left with are towering wedges of the lightest, airiest cheesecake you can imagine. At our table, we had two avowed cheesecake foes and they had two pieces each. Two! Each!

Here are my quibbles, though:

For one, the crust was a pain in the neck to eat. It was quite tough and hard – each time I tried to use my fork to pierce it, pieces went skittering across my plate. Next time, I'd make this with a traditional graham-cracker crust.

Second of all, the vanilla flavor can be somewhat overwhelming. Now this may be an issue of personal preference. I happen to like lemon in cheesecakes. I happen to also like the combination of vanilla and lemon. Vanilla all on its own is a little bit…cloying? Next time, I'd add some lemon zest to the filling and perhaps reduce the vanilla by a 1/4 teaspoon.

And last but not least, that damn layer of sour cream. I'd leave it off if I make this again. It was a little goopy and I didn't really understand its point. Mask? Topping? Crack-filler? It did none of these things very well.

Cheesecake
Makes one 9-inch cake

1 1/2 cups ground almonds
3 tablespoons brown sugar
1/3 cup butter, more for pan
1 1/2 pounds cream cheese, softened
4 egg whites
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon plus 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 pint sour cream

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees. In a small bowl, combine almonds and brown sugar. Melt butter, then stir in. Butter bottom and sides of a 9-inch springform pan, then press nut mixture into bottom but not up sides.

2. In a small pan, warm cream cheese over low heat. When very soft, remove from heat, and set aside. In a large bowl, whisk egg whites and 1 cup sugar until they hold soft peaks. Be patient, this can take quite a while. Fold in cream cheese and 1 tablespoon vanilla. Pour into pan, and bake 25 to 30 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in center comes out only slightly moist; cake should not be brown.

3. Meanwhile, in a small bowl whisk together sour cream, remaining sugar and vanilla. When cake comes out of oven, increase setting to 450 degrees, and carefully spread mixture over cake. Return it to oven for 5 minutes. Do not overcook or it will crack or turn brown. Remove, and let cool in pan. Chill in refrigerator. To serve, run a knife along edge of pan, and remove sides of pan. Cut into wedges and serve.

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