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  • Amanda Hesser’s Rib Steaks with Parsley and Crouton Salad

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    I don't mean to be hopelessly materialistic, but I bought a platter (well, actually three – a smaller one and two larger ones, for a grand total of eight dollars) at a thrift store the other day and it filled me with deep-seated satisfaction and joy. I'm kind of into all that stuff, you see. Plates please me, as do tablecloths from flea markets and silver salt shakers from my mother and etched glasses in green and yellow crystal that we bought as seconds a few years ago in Berlin. For years, I've been making do with a few Sarreguemines plates I bought on Ebay years ago (they reminded me of my puces forays in Paris), with glasses that roommates contributed to the apartment, with a hodge-podge assortment of forks and knives, with paper towels instead of linen ones. But now that we've found our place in Queens, I've been thrilled to leave those things behind.

    It was fine, at first. After all, at twenty-three, I was far too busy staying up until 6 am with my girlfriends in bars and eating hors d'oeuvres for dinner at book parties in the East Village and Tribeca to care about the state of my kitchen. I'd visit my mother and she'd show me the wonderful things she'd started saving for me, "for when you have casa tua", and I'd admire them, an antique ceramic bread box, linens she'd salvaged and starched, her grandmother's silverware, champagne coupes bought piece by piece at the flea market. But casa mia was a faraway concept, one I didn't particularly long for yet. I liked having roommates, a communal home, the freedom to break a glass or eat with a plastic fork. Linen towels would have been awfully annoying to launder compared with the disposability of a paper napkin. So I'd stow the treasures away in her closet and go back to New York to resume my life.

    The years progressed, though, and as is wont to happen, I grew up a little and started hungering for a home of my own. One in which I could assume that the dishes would always be actually clean after being washed. One in which I didn't have to worry about an old plate being stuck carelessly in the microwave. One that made me want to wash linen towels and vacuum more than once a month and not to have to serve dinner directly from the pots on the stove. For years, I shied away from thrift stores in New York precisely because I didn't want to be tempted to buy anything I wouldn't be able to use. My life felt temporary. Why would I need to bring anything more into that life but the essentials?

    Hence my joy the other day about finding those platters. It was an unexpected gift. Oh, I know I sound so bourgeois. But it's the truth – the collection of all those little things that I've been storing away for years and the release to be able to make this apartment my home, our home, well, nothing could please me more.

    So I brought the platters back to Queens, the weight of the bag digging a red stripe into my shoulders, and washed the price stickers off in hot, soapy water. Then I made dinner – a punchy salad of watercress and parsley, dressed with horseradish and capers and two kinds of mustard, and topped with slices of broiled steaks. Arranged on that clean, white expanse, the salad really shone – glossy, green leaves, crisply browned croutons, juicy, pink meat with those perfectly crusty pockets and corners, while the capers provided briny little pops of flavor. The sensation of croutons crunching and rare meat yielding and fresh greens folding was totally sublime. (Though when I make this again, because I will, I'll use skirt or hanger steak instead. The rib steaks were a little fatty, and I prefer a chewier cut with salad.)

    I know that stuff doesn't define us, that if all of those "precious" things were gone tomorrow, it wouldn't really matter. Love, family, health – that's what counts. And on those points, well, all I can ask is how I ever got so lucky. So, of course a good thrift, then, is just icing on the cake, a midday treat, an excuse to make a little victory jig in public, if anything. But it can also make you stop and think about life, its small yet profound changes, the immeasurable gratitude you have towards the universe, and the funny fact that sometimes all you need to do is serve dinner on a simple, white, oval plate and contentedness is yours.

    Rib Steaks with Parsley and Crouton Salad
    Serves 4

    4 rib steaks, about 1 inch thick (this was far too much meat for us – I'd suggest 3 rib steaks instead)
    Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
    1 1/2 tablespoons salt-cured capers, rinsed thoroughly
    1 tablespoon horseradish, more to taste
    1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
    1/2 tablespoon Dijon mustard
    1/2 tablespoon coarse-grain mustard
    1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
    2 cups day-old bread cut into 1-inch cubes, lightly toasted
    Leaves from 1 large bunch of parsley
    Tops from 1 bunch of watercress

    1. Line a broiler pan with aluminum foil and heat broiler. Season steaks with salt and pepper. Put steaks on broiler pan and broil for 5 minutes on each side, for rare.

    2. Meanwhile, in a salad bowl, whisk together capers, horseradish, lemon juice, mustards and olive oil. Season with salt and pepper. Add toasted bread cubes, parsley and watercress and toast until lightly wilted.

    3. When steaks are done, let them rest for 5 minutes on a cutting board. Pour a tablespoon of the steak juices over the greens and toss. Arrange the dressed greens on a platter. Slice and arrange the steak on the salad and pour remaining juices over the steak. Serve.

  • Russ Parsons’s Braised Zucchini with Mint and Lemon

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    First it was zucchini, halved and quartered, steamed until tender, then tipped into a bowl of peeled garlic and chopped parsley and olive oil, served room temperature. Then it was rounds of zucchini, sauteed with garlic until brown and puffy and then mixed with beaten eggs, a drop of milk, chopped mint and parsley and a grating of Parmesan cheese before being baked in the oven. I can't forget zucchini, diced and sauteed with garlic and parsley and finished with lemon juice. Nor will I ever stop loving zucchini, cut into batons and fried in olive oil and anchovies, then finished with balsamic vinegar, raisins and pine nuts. And then, of course, I should note the most recent addition, zucchini stuffed with seasoned breadcrumbs and baked into deliciousness.

    Every time I think I've finally come up with my favorite zucchini recipe, another one comes along and knocks that one right off the pedestal. It's kind of frustrating, actually. If you really, truly love something, don't you want to just sit around eating it as long as that first blush of love lasts, making it so many times that by the end you're working purely from memory and the whole thing can be done in your sleep?

    Well, yeah, I guess that's not as appealing as it sounds. Besides, in a summer simply stuffed with zucchini – they're popping through the sidewalks, I hear – that's no way to be an enterprising cook. Will you forgive me, then, if I tell you to put all other zucchini recipes aside in favor of this next one? It's just too good not to go to the top of the list, mine and yours and yours.

    Braising, I think, must be the best way in the world to cook vegetables. Yes, roasting them can be lovely and sometimes eating them raw can't be beat (on a hot summer's night, a mouthful of bright crunch is just right), but braising vegetables seems to coax out their softest, tastiest flavors. And texturally, that gently slippery quality is just sublime. Pair it with a heel of crusty bread and you've got absolutely nothing to complain about for, oh, 20 minutes or so, or as long as it takes you to clean your plate (mop up the corners, too, there you go).

    The Italians, of course, knew it long ago – that cooking your vegetables until they're limp is quite a wonderful thing, provided you know what you're doing. My mother has always complained about my half-cooked vegetables – steamed until they were, I thought, still a nice, sprightly green. "These aren't even cooked!", she'd complain, and push them around on her plate. Ah, but at least they're better for you this way, I'd think smugly to myself. What a pain in the ass. Me, not her.

    Listen to my mother. And to Russ. Cook your zucchini until limp and translucent. Dress them with lemon juice and mint. Eat them as you watch the sunset and mop up the juices with some bread. Feel the buttery crunch of pine nuts between your teeth and the faint zing of mint on your tongue. Decide never to cook zucchini another way again. Decide you really mean it.

    Good luck with that.

    Braised Zucchini with Mint and Lemon
    Serves 4 to 6

    2 pounds zucchini
    2  tablespoons olive oil
    1 cup finely diced onion
    2 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
    Zest of  1/2  lemon
    Salt
    1 tablespoon chopped mint, divided
    2  tablespoons lemon juice
    2 tablespoons toasted pine nuts

    1. Cut the ends from each zucchini, slice the zucchini in quarters lengthwise and then cut the quarters in half crosswise. You'll have large pieces of zucchini about 2 to 3 inches long.

    2. In a heavy-bottomed skillet, warm the olive oil and the onion over medium-low heat until the onion softens and becomes fragrant, 3 to 4 minutes. Add the zucchini, the garlic, lemon zest, 1 teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon mint and 2 tablespoons of water and stir well to combine. Reduce heat to low and cover. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the zucchini is extremely tender and almost translucent, about 25 minutes. There should be some liquid still in the bottom of the pan.

    3. Remove the lid, add the lemon juice and increase heat to high. When the liquid begins to bubble, remove from heat and set aside uncovered. When the zucchini is at warm room temperature, stir in the remaining 2 teaspoons mint and the pine nuts, then taste and add more salt and lemon juice if necessary. Serve warm or at room temperature.

  • One Veg, Two Veg

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    Ooh, let’s get the unpleasant stuff out of the way first, shall we? I mean, with a picture like that starting things off, I can hardly expect you to stay around for more than a second or two. So I’ll be brief.

    Grilled (or broiled, as the case may be, because I’m currently so enamored with my broiler – in the wall! Not low near the floor and close to creepy-crawlies and other horrors! Easy on my back! And therefore my new best friend! – that I am making everything I possibly can in there) radicchio, sliced thinly and dressed with a warm balsamic-honey-mustard dressing, contrary to what you might think, is actually pretty vile. I had such high hopes – I love radicchio and I love slaws, but this? Was a bitter, sweetish, slimy mess that Ben and I took one bite of and then politely shoved to the sides of our plates. I don’t know if a different kind of dressing might have helped, or if keeping the radicchio raw could have salvaged this thing, but the fact of the matter is that we threw out the entire dish and I don’t mind one bit.

    (We had the juiciest, reddest tomatoes, thickly sliced and strewn with flaky salt and a zucchini frittata, cooled to room temperature, to keep us happy. Oh, and the tiniest sugared strawberries (in August still!) that we ate before bed while contemplating our couch situation. It is a situation indeed. The strawberries helped. But we’re still nowhere.)

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    And because, as many of you know, summer wouldn’t be anything if there wasn’t a constant glut of zucchini clogging your crisper drawers and your shopping bags and your kitchen counters and your stovetop, we’ve been eating zucchini like they’re going out of style – steamed and broiled and raw and frittataed. And even, now, stuffed.

    You hollow out several halved zucchini, then fill them with a light and fluffy breadcrumb mixture that’s seasoned with anchovies and basil (I did ours with olives and parsley, as Ben’s an anchovy-hater and I have sworn up and down never to deceive him with a hidden anchovy, though I am totally convinced that if I did melt a little one here or there into our meal he would never know and would proclaim dinner a delicious, savory success, but I am a good person and an even better girlfriend (well, at times) and so I cannot and would not ever do such a thing, hence the olives). You then lay the stuffed zucchini on a pool of tomato sauce studded with capers and bake them in the oven until the zucchini are tender and juicy and the breadcrumbs are browned (have I impressed upon you the necessity of making your own breadcrumbs? You must. So much easier and better than the storebought, bagged kind.). We ate these last week with our first corn of the year (why have we waited this long? possible insanity) and lamented the fact that there weren’t more.

    If I may make one little note, it’s that I would have packed down the breadcrumbs a little more – Russ says that you shouldn’t because they get pasty, but in my estimation that’s not necessarily a bad thing. If you leave them too light and airy in the zucchini, they then sort of explode on your plate later, leaving a shower of crispy breadcrumbs all over the place and you with your fork and knife, chasing them down like a rat catcher. But to each his own. Either way, you should probably double this dish, since they’ll be gone in no time.

    (You might end up with leftover breadcrumbs, so I advise you to keep them around, in the fridge is fine, and when you’re in dire need this week of a simple, quick pasta dish, boil up some spaghetti, reserve that starchy pasta water, heat up the crumbs in olive oil and toss them all together, moistening the dish with pasta water and adding some grated Parmigiano for good measure.)

    Garlic and Herb-Stuffed Zucchini
    Serves 2

    2 tablespoons olive oil, plus extra for drizzling (optional)
    1 onion, minced
    4 cloves garlic
    1 (28-ounce) can crushed tomatoes
    1/2 cup white wine
    3 tablespoons capers (or 12 pitted Nicoise olives)
    Salt
    1/2 pound baguette
    1/4 cup loosely packed, coarsely chopped basil leaves (or parsley)
    2 cloves garlic, chopped
    4 salted anchovy fillets, rinsed, bones removed and chopped (or 10 pitted Nicoise olives)
    1/3 cup toasted pine nuts (or toasted almonds)
    3 – 6 (8-inch) zucchini

    1. Heat the oven to 400 degrees. Cook the olive oil and the onion in a
    large skillet over medium heat until the onion softens, about 5
    minutes. Add the garlic; cook until fragrant, about 3 minutes. Add the
    crushed tomatoes, wine, capers or olives and one-half teaspoon salt. Simmer until
    the sauce thickens, about 20 minutes.

    2. Trim the crusts and cut the bread into cubes. Place in a food
    processor or a blender with the basil or parsley and garlic and grind to fine
    crumbs. Pour into a bowl and stir in the anchovies and pine nuts, or olives and almonds. Set
    aside.

    3. Cut each zucchini in half lengthwise and use a melonballer to
    carefully remove some of the flesh from the center to make a "canoe."
    Leave about one-fourth inch at the sides and ends and a little more at
    the bottom.

    5. Pour the tomato sauce into a lightly oiled 5-quart gratin dish or
    substitute two smaller gratin dishes. Spoon the breadcrumb mixture into
    the zucchini, mounding slightly on top. If you don’t like pasty breadcrumbs, do not press the breadcrumbs down too much.
    Arrange the zucchini in the gratin dish. Drizzle with
    olive oil if desired.

    6. Bake until the vegetables have softened and the tops of the
    breadcrumbs have browned, about 30 minutes. Serve hot or
    at room temperature.

  • Nigel Slater’s Fennel and Olive Salad

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    I have been eating an alarming amount of cheese lately. Pecorino sardo, a fat baton of which plus five water crackers made my dinner the other night, a snowy, fresh goat cheese eaten at sundown on Sunday night with a nice red wine, a wondrous English farmhouse cheddar that tasted faintly of pears studded with crystals of salt, a Pont L'Eveque set out on the counter, growing stinkier by the minute. I don't know what's come over me. Cheese is usually just a brief punctuation in my meals – a light dusting of Parmesan on pasta, a thin sliver of a nice blue while I cook, just to keep my mouth watering, or a little slice after dinner, to keep Ben company or because I've foregone dessert.

    I'm not sure if it's the heat, or the disorientation I still feel from the move. Suddenly, cheese for dinner has become an awfully convenient meal. Plus, we've got a cheese store now, one that smells like the underground cheesemonger my mother used to take me to in Berlin, before prosciutto and mozzarella became household words, when Italy still was a faraway, exotic land, even to the Germans. We'd walk down a set of rickety stairs to an underground lair, cool and stinky, where an old Italian man would gesticulate and talk wildly, selling olives and cheese and cured meats and blocks of dark chocolate, wrapped in wax paper that my mother would store in the cupboards and grate over my yogurt some mornings, shards of it flying around the kitchen table, delighting me to no end.

    Our cheese shop in Forest Hills has that similar chill and that old, familiar funk. There are St. Marcellins, wrinkled and gooey, milky mozzarelle from Italy, dusty salamis, and raw milk cheese from France. There are fragrant olives in bins and crusty loaves of bread by the door. Something about standing in this store, the pickled herring in the refrigerated case, the German chocolates on the shelves and the smell that reminds me of another time and place, makes me feel warm and comforted and recognized somehow. Plucking a bag of mozzarella di bufala from its watery bucket feels like second-nature.

    At home last night, I thumbed through Nigel Slater's Kitchen Diaries, alighting on a simple August meal he made for himself of grilled fennel and mozzarella. It sounded irresistible. I sliced a bulb of fennel thinly and broiled it on both sides, until the edges were charred and crispy and the fennel was sweet and mellow. In a bowl, I stirred together olive oil, some pitted Nicoise olives and a handful of fresh parsley leaves. The broiled fennel went into the bowl, the heat releasing the aromatics in an invisible puff. I piled the salad on a slice of broiled, garlic-rubbed bread and slid half a mozzarella ball alongside it.

    The salad? Un-Be-Lievably Good. Like, This-Is-The-Only-Way-I-Might-Ever-Eat-Fennel-Again Good. It was sweet, salty, grassy and herbal, it was chewy and crispy and soft and even a little prickly, when a parsley leaf got in the way. It was, in a word, perfection. But the mozzarella got left in the dust. It was too waxy, too sour and just not right for the symphony of flavors going on beside it. I forked the rest of my cheese over to Ben's plate and concentrated happily on the remaining salad.

    Which is really just as well, as I think my waistline was starting to swell. I'm sort of relieved that the salad broke the cheese spell. And as long as I can eat salad like this every night for the next week, I don't think I'll even miss that other stuff.

    Fennel and Olive Salad
    Serves 4

    2 medium-sized heads of fennel
    5 tablespoons of olive oil
    24 black olives (I used Nicoise)
    1 small bunch of flat-leafed parsley
    2 balls of mozzarella di bufala, optional (if you do buy these, only the best, please)

    1. Heat a grill or a broiler. Slice the stalks and fronds from the bulbs. Slice the bulbs into thing slices, no thicker than 1/8 of an inch. Grill or broil the fennel, letting it color first on one side, then the other.

    2. Pour the olive oil into a bowl and add the olives. Pull the parsley leaves from the stalks and add to the olive oil with some salt and pepper. Take the fennel off the grill or broiler and drop it into the bowl. Toss gently.

    3. Divide the salad among four plates. If using, split the mozzarella or slice thickly, then lay the pieces on top of the salad. Drizzle remaining dressing over the cheese or add a little more olive oil.

  • Summer Savory

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    1. The gas company came, they inspected, they left. My gas line is free and clear and there’s nothing to worry about. They couldn’t explain the boom and popping cabinet, but said maybe a spider got stuck in the gas line and that’s what obstructed it? Okay, sure, whatever. As long as I can keep cooking.

    2. Henry Chang’s Drunken Chicken, aside from being the most charming recipe name I ever did hear, is quite delicious. Unfortunately, I have no photographic evidence for you because precisely around dinnertime last night, I realized I had misplaced my camera battery charger and with my camera’s battery completely out, I couldn’t take photos. Fortunately, the chicken was so completely unattractive that it’s just as well. (I found the charger ten minutes after dinner. Right in the spot where it should have been in the old apartment, but that I figured was no place for checking since this is a new apartment and you know, new apartment, new rules.) Unattractive, yes, but it was also delicious and furthermore, totally delicate and subtle. As you pop each piece of cold chicken in your mouth and chew, you realize that the wine-broth-ginger-scallion marinade, while certainly imbuing the chicken with some flavor, has more than anything concentrated the real chicken flavor, so that each bite you take becomes an explosion of the most chicken-y chicken flavor you’ve ever had in your mouth. Quite remarkable, really.

    3. Is anyone else as fascinated with Chinese food as I am? I’m not talking American chop suey or even Moo Shu Chicken. I’m talking the real thing. When I read Nicole Mones’s The Last Chinese Chef I had to restrain myself from chewing the pages. The descriptions, not just of the food, but of the legend and lore behind each dish were enough to make my mouth water in real time. It is a minor tragedy to me that Ben is one of those people in Nicole’s article who knows only one kind of Chinese food, the stuff apparently called "meiguorende kouwei". He finds it oily, over-salted and over-sauced. He doesn’t believe me when I tell him that Chinese food, the stuff that Chinese people eat, "zhongguorende kouwei", can be artful and light and bursting with flavor. Now that we live here, closer to Flushing’s Chinatown, I’m on a mission. So tell me, readers, are there any places in particular I should take him to? Tell me your favorite dishes, too.

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    4. My books are back! After two weeks in boxes, I finally unpacked my books last night. Here are my cookbooks in all their glory. I thought a kitchen made a home, but it turns out that books do, too.

    5. One of the secrets of my kitchen arsenal is a little jar filled with dried summer savory. In German, summer savory is called Bohnenkraut. Because the Germans know – this stuff on green beans? Delicious delicious delicious. But it’s good on so much more, too, like this salad I made on Sunday night. I’ll admit, I was stumped by the only vegetables in my fridge that night: beets and cabbage (from my CSA). But after I sliced them up fine, sprinkled them with savory and dressed them with a sharp vinegar dressing and some flaky salt, the salad was gobbled up in no time.

    Beet and Cabbage Salad
    Serves 4

    2 beets, boiled and cooled
    1 1/2 heads of Early Jersey Wakefield Cabbage (or 1/2 head of regular green cabbage)
    1 teaspoon dried summer savory
    olive oil
    white wine vinegar
    flaky salt

    1. Quarter the beets, then slice them. Quarter the cabbage, then slice it finely. Combine the two in a bowl with the summer savory. Pour in 2 parts of olive oil to 1 part vinegar, sprinkle in a judicious amount of salt. Toss and taste, adjusting the savory, salt and vinegar as you go.

  • Donna Deane’s Apricot Tart Brulee

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    Okay, fine, I'll admit it. My new kitchen scares me. I'm intimidated, by the old stove that spits fire and smells of gas, by the unlined cabinets, filled with my familiar things, yet still dark and different and cavernous, by the linoleum floor and Formica countertops that hide crumbs and dirt and make me feel a little obsessive-compulsive when I find myself running my hands over them again and again (I guess I'm a little paranoid), by the intense pressure in the faucets that sprays water over the backsplash and make me feel like the sink controls me and not the other way around.

    The rest of the apartment still looks like someone just moved in, but the kitchen's been done since day one. Last weekend, after the movers left, and before Ben arrived, it was so satisfying to unpack all the plates and glasses and baking dishes and pots, arrange them just so in their new hiding places, hang pot-holders on this hook, a linen cloth from that one. My requisite bottle of olive oil stood sentry next to the stove, the cereal found its place above the fridge, my forks and knives were laid quietly in their nest, awaiting deployment.

    With the kitchen done, it doesn't matter that all of our books are still clustered in boxes and nothing's hung yet on the walls. I can make us meals and we can share them and that's what a home is. Of course.

    Except, how do I explain a kitchen that, despite being filled with my things – the cloths and cutting boards from Berlin, the familiar packages of rice and pasta, the pots that follow me from apartment to apartment – feels so totally foreign? I walk into the kitchen, stand at the counter for a bit, fiddle with the lone onion sitting in a little brown dish, open the cabinets and close them, then walk out again. Gemma, upstairs, asks me to come watch the baby for a few minutes and I flee, relieved that I don't have to think about cooking or the kitchen anymore. Later that night, when Ben's home and there's nothing prepared, we eat cereal with cold milk and Ben falls upon some cheese and olives, ravenous. I feel silently guilty.

    The next day, I decide to buck up, to gather myself and make this kitchen mine. We're having dinner with our friends and I've promised to bring dessert. I scan through the few recipes that aren't being held hostage in boxes and settle on an apricot tart. Seasonally appropriate, not too challenging, just right. The crust comes together nicely, easily, and is especially pleasing because I don't need to use the food processor. When acquainting yourself with a new kitchen, I find low-tech is the way to start.

    Then I turn on the oven, brand-new and digital and placed at eye-level so I don't need to stoop to retrieve things from the hot interior and the broiler no longer resides so perilously close to the kitchen bogeymen. A few seconds after the oven is lit, there's a frightening, low boom and the cabinet blows open. A smell of gas fills the air. I turn off the oven, grab my keys and head downstairs to find the super. I realize my heart is racing and my ears are ringing. I think that buying ice cream and cookies for dessert will be just fine. And I'm relieved. That's the worst part.

    But as it turns out, nothing's wrong with the oven. The super turns the oven on and off, gets down on his knees to inspect the gas line hidden in the cupboard, fiddles with a few knobs, then shrugs. He can't explain what happened and leaves with a kind smile and a pat on my shoulder. As I stand alone in my kitchen again, I think I know what's going on. I'm being tested. By my kitchen.

    With gritted teeth, I turn the oven on again, roll out the nubbly dough, parbake it, fill it with apricot halves and a vanilla custard. Diced butter goes on top (though I'd skip this next time) and then sugar is sprinkled over everything. An hour or so passes while all of this is happening and though I'm keeping a wary eye on the oven and the cabinets and the Formica and the floor, everything seems to go according to plan. The custard sets gently in the oven, the apricots swell and then wrinkle, the crust toasts and darkens, the apartment fills with the scent of baking. I wash dishes and wipe countertops, pull the tart out and slide it into the broiler drawer, feel myself moving seamlessly from one task to the next.

    Under the broiler, the thin sugar layer on the tart blisters and caramelizes. I take the tart out to cool and survey my kitchen. It's clean and quiet. My hands are warm from the oven, there's a bit of dough stuck on my index finger and my watch is dusted with a thin film of flour. The house smells good, the sun is setting, Ben's on his way home with a bottle of champagne and toilet paper (oh, to share these tasks, it's glorious), my neighbor's playing piano and I stand still in the middle of the kitchen, calm.

    Can it be? That I've gained control of my kitchen with this tart? I don't know if it goes that quickly, but it's a step in the right direction. Suddenly, a weekend full of meals to prepare doesn't seem so bad. We've got two lunches, two dinners, a guest or two, and I can't wait to get started.

    (That tart? A huge, huge success. I'm not sure I should admit this, but between the four of us, we finished the whole thing. The apricots, tangy and juicy, are a perfect foil for the subtle vanilla custard and the nutty, crunchy, buttery crust. Bookmark this one, people. It's a keeper.)

    Apricot Tart Brulee
    Serves 8

    1¼ cups flour
    1/2 cup toasted blanched almonds, ground fine
    9 tablespoons sugar, divided
    1/2 teaspoon salt
    1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons (1¼ sticks total) cold butter, divided
    1 egg yolk
    1½ teaspoons vanilla, divided
    1 cup plus 2 to 3 tablespoons whipping cream, divided
    7 to 8 apricots, cut in half and pits removed
    2 eggs, slightly beaten

    1. Heat oven to 375 degrees. To make the crust, combine the flour, ground almonds, 3 tablespoons sugar and the salt in a bowl. Cut one-half cup cold butter into small pieces and work it into the dough with your fingers or a pastry cutter until the dough is crumbly and evenly combined but not pasty.

    2. Combine the egg yolk, one-half teaspoon vanilla and 2 to 3 tablespoons whipping cream. Make a well in the center of the flour mixture and pour the egg yolk mixture in. Use a fork to quickly stir until the mixture can be formed into a ball. Gather the dough into a ball and knead several times to blend the ingredients. Form into a ball again; wrap it in plastic wrap and chill 30 minutes.

    3. Roll the dough out on a well-floured surface to about a three-eighths-inch thickness. Lift the dough into a 9-inch tart pan and gently press it into the bottom and up against the sides to the top edge of the pan; remove any excess dough. Chill for 30 minutes.

    4. Line the pan with foil, then fill halfway with pie weights. Bake the tart shell for 15 minutes. Remove it from the oven and lift off the foil and pie weights. Prick the bottom of the tart shell with a fork and return the crust to the oven. Bake until lightly browned, about 10 minutes. Remove the tart shell from the oven and cool on a wire rack. Reduce the heat to 350 degrees.

    5. Arrange the apricot halves pitted-side-up in the tart shell. Combine the remaining whipping cream, the remaining vanilla, the eggs and one-fourth cup of the sugar. Gently pour this custard over and around the apricots. Dot the tops of the apricots with the remaining 2 tablespoons butter. Sprinkle with the remaining 2 tablespoons sugar.

    6. Bake until the custard tests done in the center, about 35 to 40 minutes. Place the tart under the broiler until the top is browned, about 30 seconds or less. Remove the tart from the oven and cool. Serve warm or chilled.

  • Bluestem’s Torchie with Oyster Mushrooms, Braised Chicken and Tomatoes

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    Eeep.

    ***

    If I have ever before complained of exhaustion, let me hereby call myself a weakling and a wimp, for I have not known exhaustion until now.

    *******

    The move is done, it is over, thank heavens, and nothing got broken and we're still in one piece and all of our stuff is here, here in our glorious new apartment that I was scared I might have ended up overestimating, but now I can happily proclaim that, if anything, I underestimated just how big and light-filled and gorgeous it is.

    The past few days have been a blur of boxes and crumpled newspaper and endless loads of laundry and dishwashing and happy sighs (we have a linen closet! a whole closet just for linens!) and frustrated looks ("really? You really had to bring that damn Rothko poster to the new apartment?"). The few times we've been able to stop and smell the roses have been at dinner, when we've taken our meal out to the balcony and sat at a little weathered table and chairs, eating in silence, watching the airplanes take off.

    P1110247

    We've still got a long way to go, but we've found a home, dearest readers, and I am just abuzz with the glory of it all.

    That pasta thing up there is the first thing I cooked in the new kitchen, after a week straight of take-out and a burning desire to get my fingers dirty with something other than packing tape. It was fine, nothing special really, and a little too complicated for such a plain, weeknight dish, but I got to use my new stove (which is actually really old – I'll show you pictures sometime) and go to the grocery store, where I promptly fell in love, both with the store and the nice people who work there (the checkout lady popped two white peaches into my bag after I paid).

    The dinner might have been forgettable, but our first few nights in our new place, together, will stay with me for a long time. I'm just so happy.

    Torchie with Oyster Mushrooms, Braised Chicken and Tomatoes
    Serves 4

    2 chicken drumsticks and 2 thighs
    Salt and freshly ground black pepper
    1/4 cup olive oil
    4 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
    2 carrots, peeled and diced
    1 onion, peeled and diced
    8 ounces oyster mushrooms, cleaned and coarsely chopped
    1 10-ounce can San Marzano tomatoes (and juices), crushed by hand
    1 bay leaf
    1/2 cup chicken stock or water
    1 pound torchio, campanelle or other torch or bell-shaped pasta
    Grated pecorino Sardo, for garnish
    Chopped fresh oregano, for garnish.

    1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Pat chicken dry with paper towels, season liberally with salt and pepper, and set aside. Place a Dutch oven over medium heat and add olive oil. When oil shimmers, add chicken and brown well on both sides.

    2. Remove chicken from pan and set aside. Add garlic and allow to brown slightly (15 to 30 seconds) then add carrots, onion and mushrooms. Sauté until onions are lightly browned, 10 to 15 minutes.

    3. Add tomatoes, bay leaf and chicken stock. Bring back to a simmer and nestle chicken leg quarters into tomato sauce, spooning some sauce on top. Cover and transfer to oven to braise until chicken pulls easily away from bone, 45 minutes to 1 hour.

    4. Transfer chicken to a plate and allow to cool; keep tomato sauce warm. Meanwhile bring 6 quarts of lightly salted water to a boil. Pick cooled chicken meat from bone and return to tomato sauce.

    5. Cook torchio in salted boiling water until al dente, about 10 minutes. Drain well and add to chicken mixture. Serve garnished with grated pecorino Sardo and fresh oregano.

  • Nick Malgieri’s Supernatural Brownies

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    Nineteen boxes are packed, seven paintings are bubble-wrapped, and it still looks like I've got at least four more days of work ahead of me. In the meantime, is there anything worse than going to bed in a room with bare walls and boxes lining the bedside? I put a few things back on my bedroom walls and shoved some boxes out to the living room, making the middle-of-the-night bathroom run somewhat of a dangerous slalom exercise, but at least I don't wake up in the morning to a room resembling a mental health ward.

    Speaking of mental health, I have some advice for the change-averse and move-phobic. First of all, on your last weekend in Manhattan, make some friends have you over for an unexpectedly raucous dinner party, where you find yourself belting out Tom Petty lyrics at the top of your lungs along with seven other inebriated souls at two o'clock in the morning, convincing you that this dinner party is by far the best dinner party you've ever been to, which then, instead of leading you to wallow in self-pity about the fact that you will no longer be able to walk home from dinner parties such as this one, leads you to start brainstorming ways in which your Queens apartment can be soundproofed for the next drunken singalong.

    Second of all, invite a group of single men and your boyfriend over for a "clean-out-the-fridge barbecue" in which all the frozen beef and half-empty bottles of ketchup and mustard are turned into juicy, drippy burgers and the conversation degenerates so quickly that before you know it, you've been dispatched out of your own backyard into your living room, where you find yourself a secretly contented packer as the boys stay up late talking about slugs and snails and puppy dogs tails. Oh, and picking up chicks, natch.

    Thirdly, have your boyfriend recoil in horror at the world's largest millipede, positioned conveniently in the corner of your bedroom and over your shoulder, then have him chase the millipede with a rolled-up Sunday Styles section around your room (that your boyfriend is 6 foot 5 and the room is 10 by 11 and littered with boxes only adds to the tragicomedy) until the millipede ends up on the end of the newspaper roll along with dust bunnies you didn't know you had, leaving you so disgusted that you think the movers can't come soon enough.

    At this point, you'll be champing at the bit, I promise.

    P1110212

    In other news, I thought you might like to know that we finished all the coarse-ground cornmeal in the cupboards this weekend – it was exactly enough to make a nicely creamy mound of polenta alongside some ratatouille and a broiled chicken breast for our last Sunday lunch in Chelsea. Throwing out that crinkled plastic bag was immensely satisfying. Not as satisfying, though, as finishing the last corner of Parmigiano (grated into the zucchini risotto at dinner yesterday) and definitely not nearly as satisfying as using up all the butter, eggs and brown sugar in a pan of brownies tonight.

    Mmmmm. Brownies. Mmmmm-yessss.

    Well, wait a minute. I don't mean to be an ingrate – after all, I've got fresh brownie smell wafting through my apartment – but these exalted brownies are cakier than I was hoping for and frankly, need. After all, moving week requires something darker and fudgier, something practically clay-like. No? Wouldn't you agree? There's a time for cakey brownies and a time for fudgy ones, and this just happens to be one of those fudgy times.

    …

    (Fourthly, consider how nice it will be, once you live in Queens, to be able to run upstairs to your friends' apartment and make them eat the other half of the brownie pan in return for a cuddle with their baby. Maybe moving ain't so bad after all.)

    Supernatural Brownies
    Yields 15 large or 24 small brownies

    2 sticks (16 tablespoons) butter, more for pan and parchment paper
    8 ounces bittersweet chocolate
    4 eggs
    1/2 teaspoon salt
    1 cup dark brown sugar, such as muscovado
    1 cup granulated sugar
    2 teaspoons vanilla extract
    1 cup flour
    1/2  cup chopped walnuts or  3/4 cup whole walnuts, optional 

    1. Butter a 13-by-9-inch baking pan and line with buttered parchment paper. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In top of a double boiler set over barely simmering water, or on low power in a microwave, melt butter and chocolate together. Cool slightly. In a large bowl or mixer, whisk eggs. Whisk in salt, sugars and vanilla.

    2. Whisk in chocolate mixture. Fold in flour just until combined. If using chopped walnuts, stir them in. Pour batter into prepared pan. If using whole walnuts, arrange on top of batter. Bake for 35 to 40 minutes or until shiny and beginning to crack on top. Cool in pan on rack.

  • Housecleaning, or Three Recipes

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    Okay, we're going to veer a little bit off-course today. Because 1. I have to empty my pantry; 2. We signed the lease two days ago and had to fork over a pile of money, so big a pile that I wouldn't be able to buy groceries for new recipes over the next 10 days even if I wanted to; and 3. My CSA is keeping me so flush with vegetables that if I don't cook them every night, I'll be knee-deep in slop.

    Besides, didn't someone mention wanting to see the fruits of my type-A labor? Ask and ye shall receive, people.

    First up, we have a dish that freed me of a quarter-bag of Pennsylvania Dutch Egg Noodles that I bought when Ben was wracked with some kind of flu (the flu I like to call E. coli but that the E.R. doctor insisted was just a bug. Without having done a culture. While hitting on me as my boyfriend lay defenseless on the cot between us. Thanks a lot, doc.) and that had been sitting in my pantry for at least a year.

    You take a small onion (or a quarter of a Vidalia onion), dice it up, and fry it gently in a pan with olive oil until softened and translucent. Then you add three small zucchini that you've diced largely. Turn up the heat a bit so that the zucchini start taking on color and the onion sizzles and it all smells delightful. Start boiling your well-salted pasta water in the meantime. When the zucchini have colored quite well all over, add a handful of torn basil leaves and a handful of torn mint leaves along with a good pinch of salt. Flipping it all together with a spatula, cook the zucchini mixture until it's fragrant. Dump the egg noodles into the boiling water (a few handfuls were enough for two plates). Pull out a bottle of balsamic vinegar, add a spoonful to the zucchini mixture and cook it down, stirring all the while. There shouldn't be any liquid left in the pan. Drain the pasta and add the noodles to the pan of zucchini (adding some pasta water if necessary). Toss them together, grate a substantial amount of Parmigiano on top and eat while piping hot.

    It's fresh and sweet and has just enough of that sixth sense deliciousness from the cooked-down vinegar and funky cheese.

    Next, we have tomatoes filled with rice – an Italian classic that I am utterly obsessed with and don't eat nearly enough of. You take four large tomatoes (these are the first non-greenhouse ones I've found at the market this year, from my favorite New Jersey ladies in Union Square, and they are fantastic), cut the tops off and scoop out the insides, which you then chop up and reserve (along with all the liquid and seeds). Dice a small onion, or another quarter of the Vidalia onion you used for the dish above, and saute it gently in olive oil. After it has softened, add 1/3 cup of arborio rice to the pan and stir that around for a few minutes. Chop the tomato pulp and add all of it, plus 1/3 cup of water, to the onion and rice, fold in a few torn basil or oregano leaves and a good sprinkling of salt, lower the heat and simmer the rice, covered, for 10 minutes. Heat your oven to 350 degrees, spoon the par-cooked rice into the tomatoes, put them in a small, oiled baking dish, top them a few breadcrumbs and a drizzle of olive oil, and bake for an hour and 15 minutes. The tomatoes will shrivel a bit and become incredibly fragrant and sweet. Let them cool for a bit before eating.

    The rice is hot and sludgy and delectable and the tomatoes are sweet and caramelized. To gild the lily, you could slice up potatoes and put them around the base of the tomatoes before putting them in the oven, as the Italians do (who else can combine rice and potatoes with such success?) – they get all oil-slicked and tangy from the tomato juices – but even without the potatoes, this is one of my favorite meals.

    And then, because I realize it was a little cruel to tell you about "my" crostata and then not deliver the recipe, here you go:

    Mix together 150 grams of sugar with 150 grams of softened butter. To this add 2 eggs, the grated peel of a lemon, 200 grams of flour (depending, you might need up to 50 grams more) and half a packet of this leavening (Amazon calls it yeast, but it's not, it's more like baking powder). Knead this together until well combined, then let it rest on a board for a bit while you preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Pat 3/4 of the dough out in a tart pan or a buttered spring-form pan and cover the dough with jam of your choice (we sometimes thin the jam with a glug of brandy over low heat before spreading it on the dough). Top the jam with the remaining dough rolled into strips and woven, lattice-style. Bake until golden-brown and the jam is bubbling, 30 minutes. Cool to room temperature before eating.

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    As for these beauties? They're what I've been eating when I haven't been staring at my pantry with glassy eyes. They came as a delightful surprise from the kind and generous folks at ChefShop. They're Lapin cherries and are the biggest, plumpest, juiciest cherries I ever did eat. So good, in fact, that I can't bear to do anything with them but pop them in my mouth, one by one. I'd love to cook with them, make a pie or a clafoutis or even just roast them and serve them over cornmeal cake (using up the rest of my cornmeal, polenta and grits, somehow), but these cherries are too good for all of that. If you can get your hands on some of these, do.

    I'm off, friends, to scavenge boxes now. I'll be packing this weekend, with a beer in one hand and a handful of cherries in the other, and apparently eating a whole lot of corn-based gruel. Enjoy the weekend and the recipes and I'll see you all next week!

  • Maggie Barrett’s Crostata

    P1110150

    Now that our move is imminent, that little monster inside me has reared its head, a little monster that spends its days reminding me to get rid of that old trash can Before We Move and to sell the dingy bike on the back patio Before We Move and to use up the almost-full bag of flax seeds Before We Move and to call every utility company I've ever known Before We Move and to start collecting boxes off the streets Before We Move. This little monster keeps me up at night and has Ben shooting me sideways looks ("what was I thinking? Don't we still have two whole weeks?").

    It's just, I suppose, that I find moving to be such a disconcerting event, full of potholes where depression lurks, and never, ever predictable.

    So I do my best to manage things, to keep myself afloat with tasks and errands and to-do lists. That way I can't, even for a moment, stop and contemplate that sickening feeling when you turn around in your living room just before the movers come and realize that your entire life can be summed up by a stack of boxes, a quilt-wrapped sofa (that you don't even like, for crying out loud, but after the move bleeds you dry, who's going to have money to buy a new one?), and a few dust bunnies. Even worse than that is the sensation you have after the movers have gone and you're alone in the new place and you don't yet know that the doors swing out, not in, so you stub your toe and it hurts, and the light falls on the parquet differently than it did in the old place and it's so quiet that you can hear people on the street seven floors below as they walk their dog and suddenly you're wracked with sobs because that place that you just left, that place that was mouse-ridden and dark and leaky and loud (so, so loud)? That place was home. And this place most definitely isn't.

    Hoo hoo hee hee. Just typing all that made me a little dizzy.

    So, as I was saying, I try to manage things, prepare myself, feel as much the captain of my own ship as is humanly possible and that includes an attempt to use up all the things in my kitchen cupboards. Because is there anything more annoying than being confronted with a half-bag of all-purpose flour when you're packing up and there are boxes filled with pots and dishes and forks, and then one box half-filled with a jar of honey, some cans of tuna and that packet of Italian cake leavening that you can't seem to throw away and that has now lived in exactly four different apartments in this city? Your frugality keeps you from throwing the flour out, but the practical you refuses to pay people to schlep half-empty bags of baking goods to an outer borough. No sir.

    You therefore spend the weeks before you move strategizing on how to use up all the pantry goods before that fateful date. That this might add to your hysteria seems an afterthought. After all, you are being efficient and clever. And those are the hallmarks of a successful mover, are they not?

    Last night, I used up my all-purpose flour, the remaining half-jar of homemade ginger-orange marmalade given to me as a gift, and the rest of my homemade butter to make crostata, using Maggie Barrett's recipe printed in The New York Times last fall. (The marmalade only covered a quarter of the tart, so I used some cherry jam for the rest.) Maggie learned her crostata in Tuscany, while I've been making a different, Marchigianian version since the beginning of time, taught to me at age six or seven by Carla, the daughter of a neighbor in my grandfather's village and the resident crostata expert, and recreated approximately 900 times since then.

    Maggie's version is too salty and a little too refined for my tastes. Crostata is, after all, the humblest and most rustic of desserts. Simply a soft dough covered in homemade jam and a lattice top (or, in this case, an approximation of streusel, since the dough was too soft to roll out last night) and baked until golden and fragrant, it should be light enough to be eaten for breakfast and humble enough to nibble with a cup of tea in the afternoon.

    This version was a little too heavy for my taste, but I'll be totally honest now: that doesn't matter a whit. Not today. Not when I'm feeling triumphant about my ever-emptying pantry and Ben has crostata to keep him quiet when I come home with yet another thing we absolutely have to do Before We Move. Which reminds me, does anyone have a recipe that will use up half a bag of flax seeds, some rye flour, five tablespoons of cornmeal and a half a bottle of cane syrup?

    Crostata
    Serves 8

    9 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature
    1/2 cup sugar
    1 large egg
    1 large egg yolk
    1 teaspoon vanilla extract
    Finely grated zest of 1 lemon
    2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for rolling dough
    1 teaspoon salt (this is too much, I'd use half a teaspoon at most)
    2 teaspoons baking powder
    14 ounces apricot, raspberry or other jam

    1. Beat together butter and sugar until well-combined. Mix in the egg, egg yolk, vanilla and lemon zest, then add the flour, salt and the baking powder. Mix at medium speed just until the mixture begins to clump. Press the dough into a ball by hand, wrap in plastic and refrigerate at least 1 hour or overnight.

    2. Remove the dough from the refrigerator and allow to warm slightly. Press teh dough into the botto and sides of a removable bottom tart pan, patting it until smooth and firm. Fill the crust with jam, spreading it evenly.

    3. On a lightly floured surface, roll or pat out the remaining dough. Cut the dough into narrow strips and place them in a lattice pattern on the crostata, or break off pieces of the flattened dough to scatter haphazardly on the crostata.

    4. Bake until the pastry is golden brown, 20 to 25 minutes. Let cool for 20 minutes before serving. Serve at room temperature.