New York City

Recipe roundup

July 27, 2015 by Ann

Oh, hi! I know, I disappeared there for while. Was I on vacation? Nope. I’ve been here in New York, sweating it out on streets that smell like garbage, locked in a routine of métro-boulot-dodo that allowed me to make a great leap forward with my new novel… but offered no time for blogging. But even though I haven’t been able to document my kitchen activity, I have been cooking and discovering some wonderful recipes from ye olde internets. I’ve been wanting share my new favorite recipe links for a while, if only to gather them all in one place so that I can stop Googling every time I want to cook. Ready? Here we go:

Bucatini all’amatriciana
Ever since I discovered how to cook this Roman classic (pictured above), our Saturday family lunches have become so successful. My friend Mike from the blog, Squared Meals, says “this is the first dish that got [his] kids really excited about food” — and if you ever meet his adorable, corkscrew-curled, three-year-old, identical twin girls, they will tell you that their favorite thing to eat is “bucatini.” My method combines Mike’s recipe with the one found in Elizabeth Minchilli’s fantastic book that I keep banging on about, Eating Rome. In complete defiance of Mike and Elizabeth, who both sternly call for guanciale, I use bacon (sorry, guys); once it’s rendered I add a drizzle of olive oil to the pan to sauté the onions. The sauce requires a long simmer until the tomatoes and onions disintegrate, but from there the dish is a snap. I usually serve half the sauce right away, mixed with half a pound of bucatini, and save the rest for a midweek dinner.

Hummus pancakes
These savory pancakes are kind of like a cross between falafel and socca, made from a base of chickpeas and tahini. The recipe comes from the lovely Dorie Greenspan, who suggests serving them as a festive first course, drizzled with tahini mayonnaise and topped with a simple salad. I liked them that way, but I absolutely loved the leftovers as a brown bag lunch. I warmed a couple of pancakes in the office microwave and slid them into a toasted pita with sliced avocado and cheddar. You could make a batch of these for the freezer, and keep them on hand for lunch or dinner emergencies.

DIY Shake Shack burger
It depends on your preferences, but me, I’m a thin-patty, salty, smushy, American cheeseburger kind of girl. Honestly, my heart belongs to In-N-Out, but here in New York, Shake Shack fills the void. Alas, our outpost is slightly too far for convenient takeout. Well, praise be to the burger gods, this recipe from Smitten Kitchen gives precise steps to make your own “smash-style” burger at home. Friends, I am not exaggerating when I say that this is the best burger that I have ever cooked: savory, with a chewy, rough-textured crust, and a juicy medium-rare center that soaks the bun. It’s so good, I don’t even care that my stove ended up covered in greasy spatter, or that my forearms are still healing from hot oil burns.

Chocolate syrup
IF your almost-two-year-old finally gives up the bottle, only to go on a milk strike, and IF you decide, in all your parenting wisdom, to entice her back to the cow juice by making chocolate milk. But IF you don’t want to give her high-fructose corn syrup — because you’re already feeling plenty guilty about starting her day with chocolate — THEN you MIGHT like Food52’s recipe for homemade chocolate syrup, which is rich and chocolatey, easy to make, calls for ingredients that are probably already in your pantry, and stores well in the fridge. This is all completely hypothetical, of course.

Ancho [insert bean here] tacos
This recipe turns cooked lentils into taco filling, with the addition of a sautéed onion, some hot sauce, and the Post Punk Kitchen’s homemade taco seasoning (which is just a mix of spices you probably have in your cupboard). But the true secret is, you can use any type of bean—I regularly substitute a can of black beans, which I crush in the pan with a potato masher. I also skip the tomato paste, because I never seem to have any on hand. Here’s how I make a fast, healthy, taco dinner: 1) Prepare the beans. 2) Cut up an avocado. Crumble some fresh goat cheese. I don’t even use a serving plate—I simply “arrange” these latter two items on a cutting board. 3) Warm two corn tortillas directly on the gas flame. 4) Dollop 1-2 tablespoons of the bean mixture on the tortillas, add a slice of avocado, some goat cheese, a splash of Cholula hot sauce. 5) Fold and eat. Repeat.

Yeast waffles
After I got a waffle iron for Christmas, I futzed around with a few recipes but once I discovered this one from The Kitchn, I abandoned all others. These crisp waffles have a lovely, round, malty flavor. They’re made from a yeast batter, which rises overnight, so you have to plan in advance, but they’re are worth the extra effort. If you follow the recipe in the link, the waffles will have a chewy, crunchy, dense texture. But one Friday night — after a lively happy hour with friends — I threw this batter together… and accidentally left out an entire cup of flour. The next morning, the batter looked strange and thin, but my dad convinced me to make the waffles anyway. Lo and behold, they turned out remarkably crisp and light — even better than the original recipe! To make the waffles MY way, follow the recipe but use: 2 cups of flour, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and 1 teaspoon sugar.

Spicy cilantro-mint chicken kebabs
I’m always looking for recipes that use a great quantity of herbs at once because I buy delicate bunches for one recipe and they turn black and slimy before I can use them for another. This recipe from Mallika Basu blends cilantro, mint, onion, ginger, garlic, and some other stuff into a spicy pesto-like marinade that she slathers on chicken thighs and drumsticks before baking. But I don’t like dark meat, so I made chicken kebabs. I plunged cubes of chicken breast into the marinade and left them in the fridge all day. That evening, I threaded the cubes onto skewers and cooked them in my grill pan. I’m not sure if it was the high heat, or the long marinade, but it was some of the tenderest, tastiest chicken I’ve eaten in a long time.

What are you cooking this summer?

Cheese bourekas

June 25, 2015 by Ann

The other day I made these cheese pastries and Lucy, aged 22 months, actually broke into applause!

I first saw the recipe on my friend Esther’s Instagram feed, and I couldn’t rest until I’d made a batch for myself. They are wickedly delicious and, because they use packaged puff pastry, a snap to whip together.

I used Dufour Classic Puff Pastry dough, purchased at Whole Foods. It’s made with pure butter, astonishingly delicious, and better than any packaged pâte feuilletée I’ve found in France. I found the hardest part of this recipe was cutting the dough into even squares. Make sure everything is well-chilled, and use a piece of trimmed parchment paper as a guide.

You can experiment with the filling, using the cheeses you like, or whatever you have on hand. Esthy’s mixture combines grated mozzarella, parmesan, and American muenster cheese, which is mild, salty, soft and insanely melty (and not to be confused with Alsatian munster, so stinky it sometimes gets its own knife on the cheese board). Combine the cheeses with a beaten egg and top each square of dough with a spoonful of filling. Fold, crimp, brush with beaten egg, sprinkle with sesame seeds and salt flakes, et voilà! After 25 minutes in the oven—during which time the scent of butter will fill your home—you might also burst into applause.

I like to accompany these bourekas with a green salad (to stave off guilt) for a quick and delicious lunch. But if you’re almost two, and you don’t have the molars/palate for lettuce, cherry tomatoes (“may-toes”) are another lovely counterpoint. By the way, leftover cheese pastries make a terrific, celebratory breakfast—just warm them for a few minutes in the oven so that the filling softens and the pastry turns hilariously flaky.

In the family meal trenches, there aren’t a lot of unequivocal hits, but this one is a complete and total WIN.

Cheese bourekas
Adapted from Esther Abramowicz of Cumin, Beet, & Chocolate
Makes 12 small pastries

1 14-oz package puff pastry dough, defrosted overnight in the fridge (look for 100% all-butter pastry)
1/2 cup grated Mozzarella cheese
1/2 cup grated Muenster cheese
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
2 eggs
Salt and pepper
Sesame seeds and/or fleur de sel for sprinkling

Preheat the oven to 375ºF. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

In a small bowl, add the cheeses and one egg, mix until combined. Season with salt and pepper.

Cut the dough into even squares. I used a piece of parchment paper as a guide to make 12 small squares.

In a small dish, beat the second egg. Divide the cheese mixture between the pastry squares, about one tablespoon per square. Seal each boureka by dipping a finger into the beaten egg, and running it around the edges of the square. Fold the edges to form a triangle and use a fork to crimp the sides. Brush with the remaining beaten egg and sprinkle with sesame seeds and fleur de sel, if desired.

Bake for 25 minutes, or until the pastry is golden, and firm and dry to the touch. Do not under bake.

Note: If I have leftover beaten egg, I make it into a small omelette for a cook’s treat!

Here’s what happens when you make this recipe.

I tried Blue Apron’s meal delivery service

April 28, 2015 by Ann

First, let’s review the facts:

– I really like to cook.
– But after a full day of work and baby wrangling, I don’t have a lot of energy left.
– I try to create a weekly meal plan and do all the grocery shopping in one fell swoop.
– Creating a weekly meal plan and doing all the grocery shopping in one fell swoop makes me feel like a cranky old fuddy-duddy. Like a MOM.
– Lately I’ve been stuck in a cooking rut, plodding along on well-worn path of chili, soup, pasta with broccoli, and other similar wholesome dishes that I am completely sick of.

After seeing rave reviews on social media, I decided to shake up my kitchen routine by trying out Blue Apron. This is a weekly meal delivery service that sends a refrigerated box containing pre-portioned ingredients, as well as illustrated recipe cards that tell you how to cook everything. My box contained three meals for two people, for $59.99. Please note, this is not a sponsored post—thanks to a friend’s reference, I got the first box free, but I wanted to give the service a fair shot, so I paid for the second week myself.

The first box arrived on Friday night. The ingredients for each meal were precisely measured and wrapped, but the produce was unwashed. I loved the healthy infusion of leafy vegetables, but lordy, there is nothing I hate more than washing and drying sandy greens. For five of the six meals, I faced the tedious task of rinsing and patting spinach, kale, or Bibb lettuce. (Yes, I considered skipping this step—I often buy pre-washed spinach or kale to save time—but an email from Blue Apron instructed me to “wash all fruits and vegetables before cooking.”)

Here’s what I made:

Week one:

–Chile-blackened cod with epazote, avocado, and red rice salad (stated cooking time: 25-35 minutes; me: 50 minutes).

–Pan-seared chicken verjus with pearled barley and mushrooms à la Grècque (stated cooking time: 35-45 minutes; me: 1 hour, 20 minutes).

–Roasted Japanese sweet potatoes with miso-dressed spinach and candied cashews (pictured above) (stated cooking time: 25-35 minutes; me: 45 minutes).

Week two:

–Lemon and black pepper shrimp with fresh linguine, and fava leaves (stated cooking time: 15-25 minutes; me: 45 minutes).

–Spiced turkey meatball pitas with sugar snap peas and Bibb lettuce salad (stated cooking time 25-35 minutes; me: 1 hour).

–Pan seared steaks with green peppercorn sauce, creamed spinach, and roasted fingerling potatoes (stated cooking time 25-35 minutes; me: 35 minutes — and only because I didn’t wash the spinach).

What I liked:

I enjoyed using new ingredients like white miso paste, red rice, epazote (a strong herb), fresh fava leaves, pickled green peppercorns, and the greatest flavor boost of all time, chicken or beef demi-glace (where can I buy this stuff, I want to mainline it).

I learned a few new techniques, like quick-candying cashews to add sweet crunch to salad. I also learned that two teaspoons of olive oil is enough to sauté almost anything.

I appreciated the partial break from meal planning and grocery shopping. I say “partial” because I try to cook at least five dinners a week, so I still had two nights to fill.

What I didn’t like:

The meals took way too much time to cook—especially for only two portions. I missed having leftovers for lunch the next day.

Sometimes the portions were too small. For example, the shrimp linguine meal offered only 3 oz of fresh pasta per person—we had to supplement with bread. After the turkey meatballs, my husband woke up hungry in middle of the night.

Though ingredients came pre-measured, I still had to wash the veg, peel and mince garlic and/or ginger, pluck herbs—e.g. all my least favorite kitchen tasks

Because the meals are designed for “quick” preparation, they’re limited to certain techniques. While the flavors and cuisines varied, every meal seemed to feature similar basic building blocks of sautéed fish or meat, boiled grain, roasted or sautéed veg. Also, the recipe instructions specify an awful lot of washing and reusing of the same sauté pan. I’m not sure if Blue Apron thinks its customers only own one pan? But if speed is the goal, it’s certainly faster to cook several items simultaneously.

To cancel the service, you have to send an email request and wait. Once I received Blue Apron’s response, the instructions were easy to follow, but the process could (should?) be more straightforward and easier to find on the website.

Would I sign up again?

Honestly, no. The meals took too long to prepare and produced too little food for the amount of time and money invested. This could be a good service for people who really don’t like (or know how) to cook, but for me it missed the mark. I may dislike meal planning, but it turns out I like my kitchen independence.

Blueberry banana muffins

April 13, 2015 by Ann

Two sweet things happened this weekend. First, I made baked these blueberry banana muffins—my third batch since the new year. I’m not sure why I’ve been keeping these muffins a secret because they’re lovely, lightly sweet with a crumb that manages to be tender and nutty at the same time. They’re not health muffins—the recipe contains butter, eggs, sugar, and gluten—but they use these ingredients in moderation. Let’s be honest, muffins are cake, but these taste wholesome.

Blueberry banana muffins

The nutty bite comes from whole wheat flour and a scoop of that wheat germ that’s been hanging out in my cupboard since this post. The rest of the recipe is pretty typically cake/muffin-like: beaten butter, sugar, eggs, milk, mashed bananas, and a cup of frozen blueberries to keep things moist. By the way, if your brown sugar dries to an impenetrable rock like mine does, here’s a kitchen tip: store it in the freezer! It defrosts in a minute to a perfectly moist, packable texture.

I like to keep these muffins in the freezer, and pull them out on mornings that seem otherwise grim. Thirty seconds in the microwave softens both their crumb and my mood—every day starts better with a muffin! And aside from the fact that they are like a cakey Prozac equivalent, my other favorite part about these muffins is that they come together so quickly. An hour of baking left me plenty of time for the second sweet event of the weekend: A trip to Brooklyn with the baby to visit some of my best friends and their babies.

There were swings, bouncy bridges, a long interlude moving sticks and pebbles around a hollow tree, and a little girl who couldn’t get enough of the big, twisty slide. “Again! Again!”

Blueberry banana muffins
Adapted from Martha Stewart

Note: Overripe bananas and my desire to make muffins never seem to coincide. So, when a banana turns black, I peel it and pop it in the freezer. It defrosts and mashes beautifully.

Makes 16 muffins

1 cup whole wheat flour
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup wheat germ
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, softened to room temperature
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup dark brown sugar
2 eggs
1/3 cup milk
2 ripe bananas
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup frozen blueberries

Preheat oven to 375ºF. Line a 12-cup muffin tin with paper liners. In a bowl, combine the flours, wheat germ, baking soda, and salt.

In a large bowl, beat together the butter and sugars until fluffy. Add in the eggs, one at a time, beating until incorporated. In a separate bowl, use a potato masher to crush the bananas. Stir in the milk and vanilla.

Using a wooden spoon, alternately add the flour mixture and banana mixture to the butter mixture. Fold in the frozen blueberries.

Divide batter among the muffins cups. Bake for 20-25 minutes, or until a chopstick inserted in the center of the muffin comes out clean. Repeat with the remaining batter (I usually get 16 muffins from one batch).

Stir-fried tomatoes and scrambled eggs

July 15, 2014 by Ann

Last week, I went to Chinatown for the first time in years and when I turned onto Mott Street, I barely recognized it. There were single-source coffee shops and brunch-menu bistros. Nail salons. Vintage clothing boutiques. A few blocks further, I spotted some familiar sights: bins of dried shrimp and mushrooms spilling onto the street, tanks of fresh crabs, a couple of old ladies haggling over a pile of dragon eye fruit. And also tourists snapping photos of the local color? Dear Chinatown, please don’t turn into the next Lower East Side. Xie xie.

I went to Chinatown because I’d decided to cook up some jiachangcai, or homestyle Chinese food. Usually when I crave Chinese food, I eat out because Chinese dinners are multi-dish kinds of meals and lately I’ve been a one-pot kind of cook. But I’d been craving a dish SO simple, SO homestyle I’d never seen it on the menu outside of China: stir-fried tomatoes and scrambled eggs.

This most humble of dishes uses only a few ingredients: tomatoes and eggs. Scallions and ginger. Salt and sugar. Maybe if you’re feeling fancy, minced garlic and a drizzle of sesame oil. It’s tangy, sweet, and savory, with a sticky sauce that sinks into a bowl of rice creating hot, satisfying, delicious mouthfuls. It’s peasant food. Comfort food. Bachelor food. Akin to a plain plate of spaghetti and tomato sauce, most Chinese people can cook it without a recipe—and I’d wager that a large percentage of them have eaten so much of it, they hope to never see it again.

I discovered this dish while living in Beijing and working at an expat magazine. (Curiously, despite a childhood of Chinese food, I never ate this growing up.) My colleagues and I enjoyed daily lunches at cheap neighborhood dives, feasting on an array of salty, spicy dishes. The memory of that food—fresh from the wok, glistening with oil—still makes my mouth water. Xihongzhi chao jidan—as this dish is called in Mandarin—was part of the daily parade, one of my favorites.

But back to my trip to Chinatown. I didn’t need any special ingredients to cook this dish and I certainly didn’t need to make a special trip to the Chinese supermarket. But as I said, Chinese food is at its best a multi-dish affair and if you’re making one dish, you might as well make two. I decided that this Sichuanese celery beef would round out the meal, which meant hunting down a jar of fermented-bean-and-chili-paste called la doubanjiang. I found it at New York Mart, a newish supermarket that’s like a wonderland of Asian food, where I also picked up a five-pound sack of rice, two mangos, and a bottle of Chinkiang vinegar. And now my pantry is so well stocked, I can throw away the take-out menus! (Just kidding.)

Chinese stir-fried tomatoes and scrambled eggs
Serves two as a main dish with rice, or four as part of a meal with other dishes

5 large eggs
2 tablespoons vegetable oil, divided
3 scallions, white parts only, finely chopped
1 tablespoon finely chopped ginger
1 tablespoon finely chopped garlic
5 medium tomatoes, cut into a large dice
1 1/2 teaspoons sugar
Salt
2 teaspoons sesame oil

Beat the eggs until smooth. Heat 1 tablespoon of oil in a nonstick skillet over medium-high heat until hot. Add half the scallion, stirring until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add the eggs and scramble them, forming large curds. Remove the cooked eggs into a bowl. Wipe out the skillet.

Heat the remaining tablespoon of oil in the skillet over medium-high heat. Add the remaining scallion, ginger, and garlic, stirring until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add the tomatoes and stir to combine. Sprinkle over the sugar and salt. Cook until the tomatoes have softened and started to release their juices—they should be soft, but not completely disintegrated into a sauce. Return the eggs to the skillet and heat through, stirring gently once or twice to combine. Add the sesame oil. Taste and adjust seasonings. Serve with white rice.

PS Thanks to my lovely friend Lee Ambrozy for help with this recipe.

PPS New York Mart
128 Mott Street
New York, NY 10013
212-680-0179

PPPS I’ve finally found a great Chinese restaurant in New York City. It’s called Café China and I’ve eaten there twice and am officially in love with the mapo tofu, shredded pork (yuxiang rousi), and Sichuan spicy fried chicken (Chongqing lazi ji)… I’m hungry just typing this.

Café China
13 E. 37th Street
New York, NY 10016
212-213-2810

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