Tag Archives: Dinner

July 2, 2010 · 2:30 am

Butter Face

The title of this post was born out of this thought process: Dandelion greens, dandelions in my front yard, rubbing a dandelion on my chin, looking like I rubbed butter on my chin, butter face. A peek into my psyche, ladies and gentlemen. I know. Terrifying.

Anyway… I mentioned a few posts ago that my boss gave me a boat load of greens, including the now identified rainbow chard and dandelion greens. Should you come across dandelion greens at your local farmers’ market, do not let those little yellow petals deter you! This is a spicy, strong-tasting green and it is delicious. Below, a few suggestions on how to eat them:

With over-easy eggs on toast, with TONS of parmesan cheese and plenty of salt and pepper. [This is my take on Serious Pie’s Guanciale, Soft egg, and Arugula pizza: I swear it had dandelion greens in place of arugula when I ate it in January]

To liven up ANY sandwich. My boring ham and swiss on white bread was enlivened today with some crispy leaves of dandelion greens and a smear of spicy mustard.

In a salad with crisped up chunks of bacon (lardons, if you’re fancy… and I am) and vinaigrette.

Sauteed in a pan with a little garlic and some spicy sausage, and a pinch of red pepper flakes.

The key to dandelion greens is that they have a very strong, sometimes acrid, flavor and they need additionally strong (but contrasting) flavors to make them work, i.e. ham and swiss, garlic, spicy sausage, etc.

Bon chance, mes petits choux!

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July 1, 2010 · 2:30 am

Malaysian Chicken Over Rice

Please note, this is the least appetizing picture I could've possibly taken of this dish - it was INCREDIBLE and I couldn't wait to stuff it in my face.

It’s always a good-eats weekend when Giuseppe is in town. He is such an incredible cook, and when you ask him for the recipe he almost can’t tell you because it’s all in his brain. I have oodles and oodles of respect for cooks that can just smell and taste when something is right. And oh man… was this right.

*Please note that this is a dish you HAVE to watch over, taste and smell. It takes some intuition! Just trust yourself.

On the menu:
Malaysian chicken over rice

6 chicken breasts
1 Tbsp sesame oil
1/4 cup green onion (scallion or Asian), just the green part
2 cups broccoli, frozen or fresh
1/4 cup unsalted natural peanut butter
1 Tbsp tamarind sauce
2 Tbsp fresh ginger, finely chopped
2 Tbsp garlic, finely chopped
1 Tbsp Sriracha
1 cup light coconut milk
1/2 cup snow peas
1/2 cup carrots
2 Tbsp Asian basil
2 Tbsp lemon grass
Salt to taste
3 cups roasted basmati rice [you can buy this already roasted, or roast it yourself in the oven]

Cut raw chicken into strips and pat dry. In a very large pot (you’ll be making everything but the rice in one big pot) heat the sesame oil over medium/high heat and add the chicken. Cook until the chicken is very lightly browned. Lower the heat to medium. Add onions and cook for another 2 minutes. Add broccoli and cook until the broccoli has just turned bright green, around 2 – 3 minutes. Add peanut butter, tamarind sauce, ginger, and garlic and cook until incorporated with other ingredients, around 2 minutes. Add coconut milk. When the chicken is cooked through (test a piece to check for pink inside), add the snow peas, carrots, basil, and lemongrass. Stir well and let simmer until the basil and lemongrass are fragrant.

The rice will take about 45 minutes, so best to start it at the beginning of prep.

Serve the stew over the rice and watch the faces around your table light up with glee.

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June 28, 2010 · 2:30 am

The Incredible, Edible…

You get it. Once again, this weekend was a scorcher. It’s forcing the cook in me to be creative and devise recipes and meals that don’t require my oven but are also innovative and appetizing enough to keep me from calling up Delivery.com. You know the feeling.

I dined on some INCREDIBLE Malaysian stew Sunday night for dinner, and will have that recipe for you tomorrow. In an effort to start your weekend off right (and drooling) this is a quick meal I whipped up sans oven and in two lovely little pans. It’s incredibly basic, and you’ll notice my fridge staples in there: tomatoes, goat cheese, and walnuts. If I have them on hand, I never go hungry.

On the menu:
Scrambled eggs with tomatoes, goat cheese, and walnuts over fried potatoes

There is no magic recipe here, folks. One tip I will share with you is my recipe for the PERFECT scrambled eggs. You start with a clean non-stick frying pan, and spray a little cooking spray in the pan. In a small bowl, whisk together the eggs with a little milk and about 2 Tbsp cheddar cheese. Pour the egg mixture in the frying pan, and turn heat to LOW. This is important. Keep the heat at low the entire time, constantly moving the eggs in the pan with a spatula. Once the eggs start to firm up (when almost all the liquid is gone) turn off the heat. NOTE: eggs continue to cook even after you remove them from the heat, so if you want them delicious and creamy, kill the heat just before they’re done.

Et voila! I fried up some potatoes in an adjacent frying pan, plated them, poured the scrambled eggs over top, and added my toppings. It’s attractive, satisfying, and it took me literally 15 minutes to make.

Tomorrow: Malaysian stew! Get ready. It’s gonna be good.

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June 23, 2010 · 2:30 am

Right in Your Own Backyard

Living in New York City, the closest most of us come to growing our own food is a box on our fire escape with some basil or tomatoes. However, if you’re like me and you’re luckier than a leprechaun riding a unicorn through a field of four leaf clovers, you have a neighbor and friend who has a fig tree AND a peach tree in her backyard. It’s like Eden over there.

On the menu:
Grilled chicken over corn puree with fig relish
Serves 2

Fig Relish:

1 cup fresh figs*, chopped into 1/2 inch cubes
1 shallot, minced
1 Tbsp Balsamic vinegar
1/4 tsp rosemary, finely chopped
2 tsp honey
Salt and pepper to taste

Combine vinegar, shallot, and rosemary in a small bowl and let sit for 10 minutes. Add figs and honey to vinegar mixture, fold in, set aside.

Corn puree:

1/2 cup corn (thawed frozen corn works, but nothing beats fresh summer corn cut off of the cob)
1 Tbsp butter
1 clove garlic, thinly sliced
1/2 cup heavy cream

Melt butter in a small sauce pan over medium heat, add garlic and sautee until garlic is browned. Add corn and sautee for 4-5 minutes. Add heavy cream and increase heat. Stir and cook until the liquid has reduced and the cream coats the corn. Let this mixture cool, and then blend until smooth in a food processor.

Pound 2 chicken breasts flat, season with salt and pepper, and then grill, either on an actual grill or in a frying pan for 6-7 minutes on either side. To plate, pour the corn puree onto a plate, place chicken breast on the corn, and top with the fig relish.

*Note: it is not quite fig season yet (usually end of summer, early fall) but dates would also work in this dish, or red plums. You could use dried figs but you’ll get a very different texture and flavor. Still delicious but… different.

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June 17, 2010 · 2:30 am

One Meal Becomes Another

I’m not gonna lie to you, folks. Sometimes I make dishes that suck. I’m still not incredibly skilled in seasoning, unless it’s a no-brainer like lemon and rosemary, or tomato and basil. So when I threw together the contents of my fridge in the form of pasta, cherry tomatoes, cooked spinach, and olive oil with a little salt and pepper, it was… bland. Real bland. And when I eyed the leftovers the following day, I wondered what to do. And then it hit me: frittata.

Seriously, mixing leftovers with eggs and cheese and baking it in the oven is the answer to all my leftovers. Random veg in the crisper? Eggs, cheese, bake. Bland pasta? Eggs, cheese, bake. Half a roasted chicken breast and some fried potatoes? Eggs, cheese, bake. Chocolate cupcakes with raspberry frosting? Eggs, cheese, bake. SIKE. Who has leftover cupcakes?

On the menu:
Macaroni frittata with tomatoes, spinach, and parmesan

What you’ll need:
Leftovers – really, anything that is already cooked or can be eaten raw (i.e. fruits and veg) will work in this dish. Don’t be throwing raw chicken in there.
Cheese – I used parmesan because to me, tomatoes and spinach says “salty Italian” but maybe you have some cheddar, some swiss, a little block of goat cheese. Throw it in.
Veg – as I mentioned, I had cherry tomatoes and cooked spinach already in the failed pasta dish so I just mixed it in with eggs and a little milk, but maybe you have a chunk of red onion or some slices of yellow pepper, a handful of raw broccoli or half a zucchini. Whatever you need to get rid of.

I also added a little oregano to my concoction, poured it in a skillet, baked it all up for 20 minutes in a 350 degree oven, and had a deeeelicious dinner. Try it. You’ll like it!

[In other news, this dish is PERFECT and so easy for a brunch: cut it pie-style into slices and serve with mimosas, donut muffins , and a fruit salad]

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June 11, 2010 · 2:30 am

I Love ’em All

Pancakes, that is. I. Love. Pancakes. Is it a simple batter? Can it be flipped using a spatula and a griddle? Is it flat and round? I will eat it, sir.

To celebrate the early acquisition of a highly coveted new cookbook, I picked a pancake recipe and hopped to. Amanda Hesser’s upcoming The Essential New York Times Cookbook is everything you could ever want from food in the New York Times. She has pulled recipes from literally every decade of the Times’ recipe section’s existence, tried the recipes out, and offered up her suggestions for making them delicious in the present day. I freaking love this cookbook. And I ESPECIALLY love the hilarious but still tempting recipes from the 1970s and 80s, most of which involve pickling and weird methods of serving eggs. This is the stuff, people. This. Is. The. Stuff.

On the menu:
Fresh corn griddle cakes with parmesan and chives
Serves 4-6
Adapted from Amanda Hesser’s version of Jack Bishop’s “If Corn’s Off the Cob, Use Your Imagination” from The Essential New York Times Cookbook, published by W. W. Norton, available in October 2010

4 medium ears corn, shucked
1 egg
1/4 cup flour
1/3 cup parmesan cheese, grated
1 Tbsp chives, snipped
1/2 tsp salt
Freshly ground black pepper to taste
1 Tbsp unsalted butter

Working over a large bowl, grate the corn on the large holes of a box grater until the cobs are clean; discard the cobs. Add the egg, flour, cheese, chives, salt, and pepper to the corn. Stir until the batter is smooth. Taste and add more salt and/or pepper as needed.

Melt the butter in a large nonstick skillet over medium heat. Scoop up 1/4 cup of the thick batter and scrape it into the skillet, smoothing the mound to a flat pancake for cooking. Cook each pancake for 6 minutes on each side for best results (you want each cake crispy on the outside and cooked all the way through, unlike a traditional pancake that is more delicate).

Et voila! Crispy corn cakes that you can serve with virtually any meal. They would be lovely in a bread basket on the table at dinner with roast chicken and mashed potatoes, or warmed in the toaster with a pat of butter and maybe a little mango salsa over top. I was also thinking these would be phenomenal in place of an English muffin in Eggs Benedict. But then again… I am literally always thinking of Eggs Benedict.

Please don’t judge me.

Bon weekend!

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June 3, 2010 · 2:48 am

I’ll meet you anytime you want, in our Italian restaurant

I’m just going to come right out and say it: if you don’t have a great sense of smell, then I feel really sorry for you. Your life is like a bowl of rice krispies that’s got the snap crackle but is missing the pop. Because when a batch of garlicky, pancetta-laden scallops are bubbling away in a hot oven and that glorious, buttery smell is wafting through the air… there is literally nothing else like it. Nothing.

On the menu:
Scallop Gratin (adapted from Ina Garten’s bay scallop gratin )
Serves 2

3 Tbsp unsalted butter, softened
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 medium shallot, minced
2 oz thinly sliced Pancetta, minced
3 Tbsp minced fresh parsley, plus 2 extra sprigs for garnish
2 Tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice
4 Tbsp dry white wine, separated into 1 Tbsp (for topping) and 3 Tbsp (for the bottom of the baking dish)
1 tsp salt
1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
4 Tbsp olive oil
1/4 cup panko bread crumbs
1 lb fresh sea scallops

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.

To make the topping, place the butter in a bowl. With an electric mixer on the lowest speed, add the garlic, shallot, pancetta, chopped parsley, lemon juice, 1 Tbsp of white wine, salt, and pepper and mix until combined. With the mixer still on low, add the 3 Tbsp of olive oil slowly, until combined. Fold in the panko with a rubber spatula and set aside.

Rinse scallops and pat dry with paper towels. In a non-stick skillet, heat remaining 1 Tbsp of olive oil over medium/high heat. Place scallops in skillet, with 1 inch between each. Sear on one side for 2 minutes, flip over and sear on the other side for 2 minutes.

Place 3 Tbsp of the wine in the bottom of a small baking dish and place seared scallops in the dish [NOTE: for best results, your scallops should be touching in the dish with little to no room between them]. Spoon the garlic butter evenly over the top of the scallops. Bake for 10 to 11 minutes, until the topping is golden and sizzling. Turn on your broiler and let the dish broil for 2 minutes, until browned. Garnish with parsley. Serve with crusty slices of French baguette.

*note: these photos were taken with Becca's incredible new camera with a food setting... apologies for the crap pictures from my own camera that will follow this post

Also note that this dish yields AMAZING dipping sauce so you’ll need plenty of bread to sop up all that goodness.

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