About
My name is Michelle but my friends call me Mitch. I live in New York City. These are my adventures (and boring weekday evenings) in home cooking.Find
Ultra-simple directions: toss green beans (or flat-shaped Romano beans like the ones in the photo) with oil, ancho chile powder, cayenne pepper, and salt. Roast in a 425-degree oven for 20 minutes or so, until they get crackly and brown. Finish with a few squeezes of lime.
Eggs on pizza can be a very good thing, as I learned at ABC Kitchen a few months ago while devouring brunch (mushroom and oregano pizza with a runny egg plopped in the center). I had also seen this and this. I let egg yolks run all over so many of my meals on a regular basis, so why not pizza too? I finally did one lazy and hazy weekday morning sometime during the lull between the end of my summer class and the beginning of a trip to the West coast. It may also become a de facto dinner pizza.
Adding the egg(s) is basically the very last step before you shut the over door if you’re gonna do this. It helps to make some kind of nest out of cheese or vegetables to hold the egg in (as you can see in the photo above, I should’ve formed some kind of tomato barricade). It also helps to crack the egg into a small ramekin or juice glass or something, then carefully dump it on top of the pizza. Bake the pizza as you normally would. The egg yolk should stay runny.
Those of you who are as in love with Joanna Newsom’s music as I am get it. It was that time of year that straddles summer and fall, when my CSA gives us the last of summer’s peaches and plums along with early fall pear varieties like Red Clapp, Bartlett, and Seckel. And the opportunity to allude to a good song while handling food is one I can rarely pass up (it happens in my mind when the Simon & Garfunkel herbs go into something, out loud when John sees summer or winter savory and iTunes is within reach, and don’t even get me started on the teaches of peaches).
After a long day of work, the thought of chilling and rolling out pie dough or even making biscuit batter to scoop on top of this fruit combo seemed like too much in terms of time and how big of a production I wanted it to be. Mark Bittman to the rescue: fruit gratin (with Greek yogurt instead of sour cream and amaretto instead of vanilla extract). I couldn’t get the top to brown because my baking dish explicitly says “No Broiler” on the bottom. And to be really honest, this would’ve been better with some kind of crust or crumble or batter surrounding it. Oh well, you really can’t have it all sometimes.
Next up: clam, crab, cockle, cowrie risotto?
I came home from a 2-week-long vacation to a freezer full of food. Before leaving, I cooked as much as possible to use up all our CSA stuff and froze the leftovers. We missed Hurricane/Tropical Storm/Potential All-Around Shitstorm Irene, but if we had been stuck in the apartment we would’ve eaten quite well (and probably would have cleaned out the liquor cabinet). Sadly, the storm caused horrendous flooding at many local farms, including the one that serves my CSA (Stoneledge Farm). I’m wishing them the best and looking forward to seeing them back up and running next season.
Anyway, this carrot soup is nice and simple, and it’s topped off with a pesto made from the carrots’ greens. It was my take on “root-to-stem” cooking, which I of course appreciate (previously: radishes sauteed with radish greens). I can also say from personal experience that the pesto is a good thing to smear on tomato and cheese sandwiches, stir into salad dressings, and mix into pasta or grain salads.
To make carrot top pesto:
Put carrot tops, whatever other fresh herbs you might have/like (I added parsley and thyme), garlic, toasted walnuts, and salt in a food processor. Press the button. Then drizzle in olive oil while the thing is still running. Add grated Parmigiano cheese (optional).
To make carrot soup:
Cook chopped onion, chopped celery, minced garlic, minced ginger, and a lot of carrots in a bit of oil in a pot until onions are translucent. Pour in enough vegetable or chicken broth to fully submerge the vegetables. Season with salt, pepper, and chopped herbs (I used savory, but sage, thyme, and/or rosemary would’ve been nice too). Cover and simmer until carrots are soft. Puree mixture, then return it to the pot. If it is too thick, add more broth. Add a splash of apple cider vinegar. Taste and adjust seasonings. Stir in carrot top pesto right before serving.
Bonus point: stick a piece of beer bread cheese toast in the bowl.
We baked bread because of bad beer (ooh, alliteration) that we didn’t feel like drinking anymore. The recipe is from Real Simple, and as you might expect, it is real simple. My advice is to use a non-stick baking sheet if you have one so that you don’t have to oil a regular baking sheet, as the recipe instructs (thereby making things even more simple). Conveniently, I also had a loaf’s worth of fresh basil that was on the verge of wilting into a brown mess, but the bread would also be good with other herbs, scallions, or nothing green at all.
Since waiting for the dough to ferment (what’s called proofing) isn’t called for in this recipe, the air pockets are tiny and the bread is soft rather than chewy. This means it’s good as a last-minute kind of bread, but also sliced crosswise for sandwiches.
(adapted from Real Simple)
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup whole wheat flour
1 package (1/4 ounce) active dry yeast (not instant yeast)
1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
3/4 cup grated parmesan cheese
1 bottle (12 fluid ounces) not-too-fancy ale, at room temperature
extra flour for the work surface
about 1 cup chopped or torn fresh basil
Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Combine flours, yeast, salt, pepper, and cheese in a large bowl.
Add beer and mix just until the dough comes together. If it’s way too sticky, add in a few tablespoons of flour at a time.
Turn dough onto a lightly floured surface (like a clean counter or a cutting board with a damp paper towel underneath it to keep it from slipping). Sprinkle basil on the dough and knead for a couple minutes.
Shape dough into a round-ish loaf and make a few 1/2-inch-deep slashes on top with a paring knife. Place dough on a non-stick baking sheet, or brush some oil on the bottom of the loaf if your baking sheet isn’t non-stick. Stick it in the oven for 40-45 minutes. The crust should be lightly browned and the loaf should sound hollow when you knock on the bottom of it. Let cool on a wire rack for at least 10 minutes before slicing.
Here’s another salad for your viewing and eating pleasure. I pulled out whatever vegetables and herbs were left before my CSA pick-up day and put ‘em all together with a simple mustard vinaigrette.
1 small fennel bulb
1/2 pound green beans
1 small carrot
1 tablespoon finely minced red onion
1 teaspoon grainy Dijon mustard
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon white wine vinegar
salt and pepper, to taste
olive oil
chopped herbs (I used dill and parsley)
Blanch or steam the green beans until they are crisp-tender. Dunk them in ice water, then dry them off and cut into bite-size segments.
Slice the fennel and carrots very thin using a mandoline or a very sharp knife (and crazy good knife skills if you want to compete with the mandoline).
Combine onion, mustard, lemon juice, vinegar, salt, and pepper. Stir until salt dissolves. Toss with vegetables. Finish with a good drizzle of olive oil and chopped herbs.
Don’t let the fact that this is frozen yogurt mislead you. It is rich and thick and coats your mouth the way ice cream does.
5 medium (about the size of a tennis ball) very ripe yellow peaches
1/3 cup water
1/2 cup sugar
1 1/2 cups plain whole-milk Greek yogurt (or yogurt you strained yourself)
a squeeze of lemon juice
Peel peaches and cut them up into chunks. In a small saucepan, combine water, peaches, and their pits (cooking them helps loosen the very last bits of fruit and maybe it contributes some kind of faint almond-like flavor?… didn’t hurt to try). Bring to a simmer and cook for 15 minutes. Turn off heat and add sugar, stirring it until it’s all dissolved. Let cool, then puree (it’s okay if there are a few chunks of fruit bobbing around). Chill peach puree for several hours or overnight.
Whisk peach puree into yogurt. Add lemon juice. Freeze in an ice cream machine. Yum.
There is roast chicken in my (more accurately, our) let’s-find-an-excuse-to-drink-a-bottle-of-wine repertoire, and now there are these. The method is pretty basic: sear bone-in chicken pieces skin-side down in a hot pan until brown and crisp. Then flip ‘em and stick the pan in a hot oven for about 20 minutes. Chow spells it out here. They recommend rubbing olive oil on the chicken, but I found that to be unnecessary since the bird’s own subcutaneous fat did enough noisy splattering all on its own.
Also, it would be a shame not to deglaze the pan and scrape up all the bits and juices into some kind of sauce. Another option I came up with: fry shallots and tiny boiled potatoes in the drippings, then toss them with arugula or other greens to beautifully wilt them.
Like cake salé, yogurt cake is a homey baked good from France that comes in a loaf pan. No waiting for butter to soften, no need to plug in any mixers, and all you need to start are everyday ingredients (which you can then add to, according to whatever else is spilling out of your fridge and pantry).
I used this recipe from Bon Appétit, minus the glaze and with half as much sugar (it was still sweet enough for me), plus about a cup of chopped fresh plums and a few sprigs’ worth of fresh thyme folded into the batter at the very end.
This week I came across a lovely article in Saveur about Mexican salsas and Mark Bittman’s New York Times feature about tomatoes (both complete with mouth-watering photos). And now I have two jars of homemade salsa, ready to be spooned over huevos rancheros and dipped into by crispy tortilla chips. Salsa de tomatillo is a no-brainer when my CSA gives us tomatillos. I’ve made it with raw tomatillos before, but I think I like the roasted version better. Salsa borracha is a tangy, thinner salsa that gets a boozy kick from beer AND tequila. I adore them both.
