Pink of Perfection

The dance of spring vegetables is the subtlest of all the seasons. They come in on tiptoes, and I find myself clamoring for asparagus and artichokes long before they’ve made their entrance. This recipe seems to bridge the gap between the lightness we long for in these rainy, teasing spring months, and the reality of the growing season in my part of the world (slow to get going). If you slide a chicken in the oven alongside the potatoes and toss together a garlicky spinach salad in those final moments of cooking, you’ve got a special, simple spring dinner.

It’s hard for me to use dill without thinking of the Scandis, and I rather love the association. Even something as simple as scattering dill on my potatoes can feel like an access point to a culture that hold enormous appeal to me: the candlelight, saunas, bicycles, pale wood, health care, spare, clever design and good beer.

And that’s one of the best ways to enjoy a recipe, I think. As lofty as it might sound, a simple recipe with good, evocative ingredients can bring us closer to the life we want ourselves to live. While this supper was in the oven, I was inspired to light the candles that had been languishing in a cabinet and purchase a fresh bouquet of flowers for the dining room table. The purple hyacinths perfumed the room for days. Inspiration can come in the humblest of places: even a bunch of dill.

Continue reading “Roasted Potatoes with Lemon and Dill” »

it’s a messy, untamed looking dish, isn’t it?

Do you ever cook something, half your heart knowing it won’t be a hit with the family and friends you’re cooking for? That’s what was happening as I separated the kale leaves from their ribs and chopped the potatoes into 1-inch cubes. I just knew, in my heart of hearts, this was not going to go over well. So it was with buoyant delight and surprise that this was declared a family favorite and gobbled up with gusto. Perhaps it was the little bit of rich, salty Parmesan or the creaminess of tahini––substantial distractions to pull the eater’s attention from the pile of vegetables on his plate. Whatever it was, it worked.

As for me, I need no fooling. I’ve been deeply in love with Tuscan kale in the last few months of this winter, love the way its leaves lay flat instead of curling up into ruffles. I’m almost sad to see it go with the cold days of February. Almost. There was something tough in February, something I can’t quite put my finger on, but it’s a feeling I’d very much like to replaced by daffodils and asparagus.

Continue reading “Roasted Potatoes with Wilted Kale and Creamy Tahini Dressing” »

A few years ago, when our upstairs neighbors were moving out, they invited me upstairs to rifle through a tall stack of cookbooks and take what I like. I spotted The Vegetarian Table: France by Georgeanne Brennan and snagged it. It wasn’t the vegetarian part that interested me or the France part necessarily, it was the author.

Rewind to a few years before that, and I was sitting on the grass at a picnic, listening to a woman my mom’s age. She was a therapist and a poet who had once worked as a caterer, and she had that wise, open, self-possession that I want to have when I grow up. It was a sunny day, and she was telling me about living in the South of France. She mentioned Georgeanne Brennan’s cookbooks, and smitten as I was with the recommender, I thought for sure her books would be gems.

There is a larger point here about generations of women having the opportunity to learn from each other, and I’m thinking how powerful an experience my bridal shower was for that very reason: how often do you get to hang out for an afternoon with women who have been over a mountain or two and can tell you about the landscape and then drink a lot of pink champagne and laugh about the journey? Not often enough, it seems to me.

And now back to the present time. I wanted to make a recipe for our French Friday series, but didn’t feel like sweating through anything laborious or fancy or meat-laden. Georgeanne Brennan’s book to the rescue. A wild mushroom ragout sounded like just the sort of warm and hearty fare for a cold night in February. I reached my hands into the mushroom baskets at the fancy grocery store and plucked out chanterelles, black trumpets, oysters, shiitakes, and porcinis. It felt quite luxurious which sometimes, for a random weeknight dinner, is just the touch of the sweet life you need.

Here’s to happy weekend cooking! Making anything good?

Continue reading “French Friday: Wild Mushroom Ragout” »

Sebastian introduced me to one of my favorite restaurants early in our relationship. In the summer there, I like tall cold glasses of hefeweizen in the still air of their gravel-covered garden. And in winter, we tuck ourselves between ’60s pin-up posters and the fireplace for duck rillettes with prunes. This particular winter, first over a dinner of roast pork and later with a big bowl of mussels, I fell in love with this dish: roasted cauliflower with fish sauce and chili. I had my friends guess at the preparation the last time we were there. Toss it with the fish sauce and hot chili pepper first, they surmised, then roast it. So that’s just what I did. For the wary, the fish sauce imparts a subtle saltiness. I especially like this mixed in with a bowl of mulligatawny.

Continue reading “Roasted Cauliflower with Fish Sauce and Chili” »

A couple weeks ago, I stood in the deli section of the grocery store between the hot dogs and the fancy cheese and wondered how women do it. There I was, tired from only a job and a zumba class, in the midst of a complete “what’s for dinner” meltdown. I didn’t have a baby balanced on my hip or some crazy stressful captain-of-industry job or only four hours of sleep under my belt. I suddenly started freaking about the future: How am I going to do this when it gets harder?

Which, when you’re trying to figure out what to make for dinner, is a little beside the point. When I brought the issue up with a friend later, she also tried to bring me back to the present moment: maybe by the time I have a baby, I’ll have figured a few things out. But in the meantime, it’s not something I need to worry about.

“Are you sure? If I don’t worry about it now, how can I be certain I’ll be prepared when the time comes?” I was kidding. Kind of.

One thing I’ve learned in the past couple weeks: right now I cannot manage the end-of-day pop into the grocery store. By then, my brain is too fried, my reserves of inspiration too depleted to whip up something wondrous. I am learning instead to make lists during the weekend when time is on my side. Yes, I’d like to make those muffins this week. Yes, that recipe looks like a perfect weeknight dinner! In that way, the meals come together without deli aisle breakdowns.

Some people, it seems to me, are just tough; their resiliency weathers the demands of daily life. Others of us, perhaps because we have high hopes for what our quality-of-life should feel like or simply because we don’t have the same stamina, get tripped up on these details. How do people make dinner every night? How do they access calm throughout the work day? How do they manage to look cute, day after day, in near-arctic temperatures? These are some of the things I find myself continually obsessed with–how people manage to get through the ordinary, uninspired aspects of life with panache. In other words, how to bring delight into the space of a day that could just as easily be filled with drudgery.

One very unromantic thing I feel I’ve learned this year: it’s about systems (I cite my winter uniform). Maybe I just need a stack of favorite weeknight recipes: easy to prepare, easy on the wallet. If I could pinpoint several favorites that could be trotted out on nights of low-inspiration and low-energy, maybe dinner wouldn’t be such a trial.

How do you do this? Do you have tried-and-trues that you always have the ingredients for in the kitchen, or are you still stuck in the day-in, day-out “what’s for dinner” spiral?

One new favorite: this broccoli. I’ve made other versions of the broccoli+garlic+crushed red pepper but never have the results been as lovely as this. A few tricks of technique (parboiling the broccoli, barely stirring it in the sauté pan, allowing it to brown) turned this into a recipe I’ll certainly return to again and again. If you can believe it, it was actually a bit of heaven with a bowl of brown rice, as ascetic as that sounds. You never know what will end up being a delight, now do you?

Continue reading “Roman-Style Broccoli and the Trials of Weeknight Dinners” »

I’m afraid if I admit what I’m about to admit, you will call me out for having been––for a brief period, at least––deeply, ridiculously spoiled. Does it make a difference if I know it? To paint the picture, I’ll tell you for the past year I had a very great freelance gig. When it ended in December, I embarked on a month of doing absolutely what I wanted to do every, single day (that’s the spoiled part). I hope that each of you, if you haven’t already, have that experience as an adult. It’s totally different from what we had as youngsters on summer days when we didn’t know we had it so good. This time, you’ll know.

So I worked on Pink of Perfection a lot (you might have noticed the twice-a-day posts), cooked great dinners, went to Anusara yoga twice a week, and in general, got a taste of exactly what life would be like if it had no wordly constraints. It felt marvelous (and probably largely accounted for my unprecedented happiness.)

Now I am gainfully employed again––hurrah!––with another freelance gig that is very sweet, indeed. I can work from home and listen to music all day and make a proper lunch. It is the best job I could hope for, and I feel wickedly grateful for it.

But, it’s still a job, and they pay you for a reason. Meanwhile, I’ve been getting reacquainted with that oh-so-tired feeling at the end of the day. I wish deeply that dinner would magically appear tonight and that our coffee supply would be restored, all without my having to step outside. It is bitterly cold out there, I hear.

If I had the nerve and the guts and the inner fortitude to brave it the four short blocks and one very windswept avenue to the store, I’d very likely make these brussels sprouts with one of those walnut-crusted chicken breasts I so adore (like faux fried chicken!). These sprouts are light and lemony, sliced thin and shredded, sautéed until still brightly green and tossed with pistachios that lend a rich, rounded saltiness. A foil fit for a greens-loving king––and women brave enough to leave their apartments on cold January days.

Continue reading “Brussels Sprouts with Lemon and Pistachios and the Making of a Working Stiff” »

Right now we are hunkered down in preparation for a snowstorm. I have candles at the ready, flannel pajamas freshly laundered, and a big hulking novel on the bedside table. There might even be a romantic comedy or two I’ve got my eye on in the old Netflix queue. If this is your reality, I’ve got my fingers crossed tomorrow’s a snow day for all of us. In which case, I’m ditching the detox and eating fried pork dumplings in my favorite cozy Chinese restaurant. A girl’s gotta have priorities.

And if it’s not a snow day? Then I will be eating the final bit of leftovers of these smoky greens. I first discovered this recipe last winter when I needed a healthful foil to French onion soup. It seems silly it’s taken me this long to tell you about it since, truly, this is one of my favorite ways of preparing winter greens. You can never go wrong just sautéeing greens with olive oil and garlic––maybe with a little crushed red pepper thrown in, too––but when a variation is in order, I humbly present a contender.

But seriously, fingers crossed for snow.

Continue reading “Winter Greens with Smoked Paprika and Almonds” »

I got so caught up yesterday reading my Astrologyzone horoscope and kicking around piddly questions like, “what will the next chapter of my life look like?” that I completely forgot to check in here and say hi. Happy December, readers. Are you feeling as hopeful and fired up as I am? (A good horoscope can do that.) There’s nothing like the start of a new month. It’s like dear old Anne’s remark about a day with no mistakes it yet times 31.

I’ve been holding out on you, I’m afraid, in other ways. See, I made this truly delicious pasta dish several weeks ago based on your suggestions of easy-but-elegant meals. But then I wanted to tell you about things to make for Thanksgiving. And then after Thanksgiving, if you felt anything like I did, the last thing you wanted to read about was a big old dish of cheesy, creamy pasta. (And now is when I should probably confess that I’ve been treating my kitchen like my own ashram mess hall and eating barley, kale, and lentils for lunch everyday. Sexy, right?)

But I’ve had enough Ayurvedic sustenance and perhaps you, too, have recovered from stuffing and mashed potatoes and one (or three) too many glasses of champagne and are ready to hear about some cheesy, creamy pasta. Maybe?

Those of you who recommended this recipe were absolutely right: it’s not everyday fare, of course, but for a dinner party, when you want to be relaxed and happy when your guests arrive and not flipping pork chops or sticking toothpicks in something, it’s perfection. And for a cold winter night, the coziness effect is multiplied. I was prepared for this pasta to be lean-back-and-unbutton-your-pants-rich, so I counted on a bright and bracing fennel salad to wake people back up again. In the end, the results were somewhere in the middle: the pasta wasn’t as coma-inducing as I expected, nor the salad as puckery. I feel, perhaps, that there is a lesson in here somewhere about moderation, but I don’t think I’m ready for it yet. Especially because we had flourless chocolate cake for dessert.

Continue reading “A Simple, Fuss-Free Menu for a Winter Dinner Party” »