Pink of Perfection

I’ve spent my adult life thinking I didn’t like barley. Turns out, what turned me off were the bloated, mushy pearls in soup. But as a grain cooked to delicate, chewy perfection, I’ve discovered I’m a big, big fan. In fact, I’ve been eating it all week with my farmer’s market stir-fries instead of rice.

You’ve got to have a killer air-conditioner or an unseasonably cool day on your hands to want to make risotto in June, I realize, and I certainly wouldn’t advise standing over a hot pot on a humid day. But I made this a few weeks ago when I had a basically bare pantry, and despite the not-so-delicious looking picture, this was a total success. I don’t think I’ll go back to making classic risotto unless it’s for a special occasion, and I’m definitely ditching the time-sucking brown rice attempt. Barley risotto it is from now on!

One more thing: this recipe kind of falls into no-brainer territory. It’s warm and comforting and soothing, and I find it’s nice to have those basic recipes on hand for the days we’re feeling uninspired about dinner, or you spent the afternoon at the public pool and return home with that feeling of bone-weary exhaustion and a cool core temperature. Don’t you love that feeling? And more than any other supper prep that comes to mind, perhaps with the exception of chopping onions, risotto-making is therapeutic, for those days when you can’t handle the high energy action of flipping this and searing that or watching the broiler like a hawk lest something burst into flames. This is for those slower days when your brain’s not firing on all cylinders and you can just manage stirring.

Continue reading “$5 Dinner: Tomato and Parmesan Barley Risotto” »

Happy Monday!

Of course, what I really mean is, great to see you again. As lovely as the weekends are, I’m always happy to come back to this little corner of the world and say hello to you again. Hello! Are you in a crap mood? Are you still glowing from the weekend? Whatever your state, it’s good to see you.

Today I am having some thoughts about granola. Is there ever really a healthy granola? How can oats and nuts add up to 7 million calories? And then there is the matter of burning. I am thinking of taking up a second career as a professional granola burner. I can bake springy custards and roll out homemade puff pastry, but I can’t seem to make granola without having to throw away lots of browned bits. Oh well. As my mom says, “God isn’t finished with me yet.”

With these questions in mind, it was with great enthusiasm that I came across a particular recipe for granola that didn’t seem to be an oil-sugar sponge disguised as a health food with so much reputation it’s become its own slang. There was a relatively small amount of oil, the intriguing addition of egg whites, and the option of using a sweetener like agave nectar. This seemed like a very good granola to me, and the jar of only-slightly-burned stuff that I passed on to a friend last week got good reviews.

But I can’t help but think that the granola I really like is the one my mom makes. It’s full of shredded coconut and slivered almonds, and the recipe is written on a sheet of notebook paper tucked inside a yellow binder. There is a coffee can on the top shelf of her fridge filled with it. So on Mother’s Day Eve, I sprinkled a bit over a little bowl of strawberry yogurt. It felt good to be home.

When it comes to my own homemade granola, though, I’ll probably stick with this version. (Or this one, which I have yet to make myself but a friend brought to book club and was heavenly.) While there are some family recipes we carry on unchanged, there are others we have to discover and write for ourselves in order to suit the people we’re becoming, or want to become. There’s a place, though, for the recipes that transport us to another time and another age. I’ll keep my hunger for mom’s granola confined to trips home and those care packages I happily lug back to the city.

Continue reading “The Quest for Healthy Granola” »

I can feel it coming in the air toniiiiiight, oh lord. The humidity. The send-your-hair-into-kinks-and-fuzz-you’ve-never-before-seen-the-likes-of airborne dampness. This means that I have officially made the switch to iced coffee. And for lunch I am thinking of ways to keep cool and crisp as a piece of celery standing upright in a glass of water. It is not hot, and I do not mean to sound as if I’m complaining. It’s just that I’m a bit of a wilter. Not because I am in possession of a delicate constitution, but because I’m a hot-blooded American woman.

That said, earthy and ethereal girls alike can partake in what I think is one of the most elegant, ladylike things one can eat for a weekday lunch: chicken salad. I suppose that’s why I have written before about a tarragon chicken salad and a provençal chicken salad. And indeed, the chicken salad parade marches on, now with a kicky curried version sweet with red grapes, snappy with red onion, and oh, it is just divine. I even fooled my mayonnaise-loving husband into thinking this was a terribly unhealthy dinner. Only the truth is that there’s just a bit of mayonnaise to temper the tang of Greek yogurt. This is exactly the sort of quick, super simple recipe I could see myself making every two weeks and keeping in the fridge. In other words, I see this becoming a trusty standby.

Continue reading “Curried Chicken Salad” »

Because I have spent this week utterly unimpressed by food, drifting from toast to salad to sandwich with little passion and even less desire, it’s hard to imagine that it was only last week when I swooned over a pork chop. The entire experience of this dinner was worthy of a French Friday: I went to the fancy market and bought thick pork chops wrapped in butcher paper from a man in a paper hat. I selected a slim baguette with a crisp shell and airy insides. I visited the wine store and explained what we were eating — in great detail — and was paired with a truly heavenly accompaniment. I came home, turned on some blues, and set about making a dinner that was ready mere moments later.

In my experience, there aren’t a lot of recipes like this — ones that tap into your best vision of yourself, that are elegant, special, and ready in a flash, that make your dining companion think you have some unmatchably magic touch when you come into contact with a cast iron skillet and tongs. Perhaps I should spend less of my time making chili and more of my time seeking out food that elevates not just dinner itself, but (not to sound heavy handed) the way I feel about my life. Because there I was, on an ordinary day, making it all look so easy (and truly, it was), sitting down to the sort of supper that would be ideal if you learned Jacques Pepin were coming over in 20 minutes, or if you just feel that you deserve a fine chop, a simple sauce, and a cold glass of wine. And here I am, a week later, without a twinge of gastronomic interest in my stomach or fingers, still feeling great about that dinner.

More pork chop recipes:

Continue reading “French Friday: Pork Chops with Mustard and Cornichons” »

I have realized in the past several months that so much about the economy of cooking at home is about volume and frequency. With a constantly rotating list of ingredients in the household (leftover parsley from one recipe, leftover ginger from another), you have at hand a greater array to work with (and to experiment with) than if you are always buying ingredients for one or two recipes a week. Unfortunately, it seems to me one would have to eat a lot of chickens to have the means to make stock for all the recipes that call for it. That’s why I’m not a purist when it comes to stock. If a recipe calls for a cup or less, I use Better Than Bouillon, but if I’m making a stew or soup, I”ll use up the homemade stock I have frozen in 4-cup portions.

Growing up it seems like there was always a chicken carcass simmering away (the Silver method below) in a tall stockpot on the Russian fireplace. And as children often do, I kept making stock just the way my mama taught me until I learned how to cut up a chicken. Turns out, making stock from the leftover backbone (Gold) makes a super flavorful broth and is now my favorite method.  I’ve never made stock from whole chickens (Platinum), though I hear it is irrefutably the best. Each household just has to find the method that’s just right for them. But undoubtedly, the best tip I ever got about the process beyond the chicken itself came directly from all of you: keep a stock bag in the freezer and stuff it with papery onion skins, carrot nobs and peels, and odds and ends of vegetable scraps. Since I can’t compost in my little apartment, this achieves that prairie girl desire to have zero-waste.

Do you make stock with one of these methods below, or some other way? Do tell!

Continue reading “4 Ways to Make Chicken Stock” »

Lately, most people I know have been hunkering down with a big bowl of noodles at least once a week. And rightfully so: the indignities of making our way through the cold and muscling into boots calls for dinner in a bowl, and preferably one that will leave you in a blissed-out carbohydrate haze. Sometimes, though, those of us who do not excel in the ways of moderation end up regretting it afterward. I like to think that if a healthy dose of cruciferous vegetable gets folded in with a wheaty tangle, the same comfort level can still be achieved and the bloated guilt diminished. At least, that’s the idea.

It wasn’t until recently that I began to explore cauliflower’s charms. I’ve always loved it as a crudité, but when it came into my life as a gratin, a soup, and most recently in Sebastian’s off-the-cuff red vegetable curry, I could feel myself falling in love. I doubt that cauliflower will stir the passion nor the vitriol sardines recently did, but that’s okay. Cauliflower is cool — a laid-back, mellow, vegetable that hangs around in the background until you need it to take center stage. It doesn’t need to live in the spotlight, but when it does, it really steals the show. And in a quietly confident way I sort of love.

Continue reading “$5 Dinner: Sweet and Spicy Cauliflower and Penne” »

Allow me to introduce you to a new very special someone in my life…

To answer your unasked but anticipated questions: yes, it is as wonderful as they say; yes, it is absolutely the heaviest item in our entire household; yes, I feel rather lucky and pretty spoiled to be the recipient of this thing. But guilt aside, having this mixer on my counter feels like crossing a sort of threshold. I think I have just entered the realm of Fancy Baker Type. More importantly, if I ever needed a push to whip up more cookies and cakes (I didn’t), this is it. I’m positively chomping at the bit to feed people desserts.

Which is why last weekend you could find me in the eye of a floury storm. First up was banana bread. Now, I know people have staunchly held beliefs about what they want from their banana bread, and I wouldn’t dare to call this the best banana bread. But in terms of what I’m looking for — a tender crumb but not cakey, a pronounced banana flavor without other distractions, and a relatively healthy composition — this is it.

I served this to a highly discerning friend (the type who can actually identify notes of cassis and butter in the wine you serve her) on an overcast Saturday afternoon. She came over wearing a plaid shirt and suede boots, tucked her legs under her on the couch, and declared this banana bread delicious. That out of the way, we poured the tea, and the real talk could commence.

Continue reading “My Best Banana Bread” »

Sometimes the mythology of a thing is more prevalent than the actual experience of it. Take, for example, running a marathon: hard, really hard. You and I both know that. In fact, even if we can’t run more than a few miles, we are convinced of its difficulty to the point of impossibility and have a feeling it’s not in the cards for us.

On one hand, this is great: word gets around in our gossipy little world with its love of quickly boxing and defining experience, and we are able to make shorthand decisions about what’s worth our time without even having tried something ourselves. We give a quick no thanks to War and Peace (too long), childbirth (too laborious), Antarctica (too cold, too desolate).

This is where I stood with puff pastry. If Mark Bittman said it wasn’t worth making from scratch, then Pepperidge Farm it would be. Enter book 5 of my Grand Diplôme program, and there it was in black and white: puff pastry. My heart sank. My contrarian side rose up. I resisted for weeks, ignoring the lesson. “Why not skip it?” a friend suggested. Tempting, but what kind of student would I be if I just skipped the lessons that seemed too hard?

And then last night, as I had courage enough and time, I went to the grocery store for butter. Then my phone rang, and it was my mom. “You’re making puff pastry? Oh, I’ve heard that’s really hard.” It is a credit to her mothering, I suppose, that I did not respond, “I know. You’re right,” shelve the butter and head back home for some pasta. I soldiered on, like, well, a marathon runner.

When I stopped long enough to look at the actual recipe I was deeply encouraged by this:

Rough puff pastry originated in farmhouse kitchens where lard from home-butchered pigs and homemade butter were readily available.

Haute cuisine makes me shake in my clogs a bit, but farmhouse cooking? Farmhouse cooking is in my bones. And can you feel what’s coming next?

I could hardly believe how simple puff pastry was. I didn’t struggle with the dough, I didn’t wipe away tears from a flour-streaked face. I pulled out the food processor, measured a little of this and that, rolled and turned and rolled and turned and rolled and turned the dough, and then thought, is that it? It was. Feeling a little too pleased with myself, that doubting voice of mythology was heard saying, “yeah, but just wait to see how it comes out once it’s cooked.” The happy reply was flaky and buttery and as puffed up as I was.

This triumph is exactly why I set out to cook from these booklets. So often we take on expert account what is and is not worth trying for ourselves. But if we have the time and the inclination and the will, we may find that our own opinions differ from those heavyweights of the cooking world. This amateur, for one, thinks puff pastry is more than worth the effort to make at home, if only for the wild sense of triumph from accomplishing what others deem too troublesome.

Continue reading “Homemade Puff Pastry & My First Chicken Pot Pie” »