smitten kitchen » Budget

ginger fried rice

deb — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 21:38:39 +0000

According to my calendar — the one I believe I just looked at for the first time since last September, when someone made my life go all date- and timeless — the Lunar New Year and Valentine’s Day fall on the same day this year. In New York at least, the Lunar New Year is an excuse to eat egregious amounts of fried rice, spare ribs and to make your way through Chinatown streets over piles of strewn red paper* from firecrackers. Valentine’s Day, however, is dominated by French food because what could be more romantic than copious amounts of wine, butter, cheese, steak and chocolate?

Or, you could stay in and have a little of both. That’s what this ginger fried recipe is to me, a classic Chinese dish, clearly reinterpreted by a French hand. For one, it has leeks, which although used in both Chinese and French cooking, I can’t say I’ve ever seen them caramelized for fried rice. Second, egg isn’t scrambled into the dish, but pulled out, fried whole and laid on top of the rice. There are other deconstructions too: the ginger and garlic are fried until crisp and scattered over the dish, like bacon bits from the Far East, rather than tucked within. And rather than cooking the rice in gobs of soy sauce and sesame oil, both are conservatively drizzled on top at the end like droplets of a pan sauce.

... Read the rest of ginger fried rice on smittenkitchen.com

tomato sauce with onion and butter

deb — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 18:36:23 +0000

I could no longer resist this sauce, and frankly, I don’t know why I even tried to: food bloggers obsess over it, and they’re not a bad lot to base a recipe selection upon. Adam of Amateur Gourmet fell for it five years ago. Molly at Orangette raved about it over two years ago, with a bonus approval marking from Luisa at Wednesday Chef. Then Rachel Eats fawned over it too, and Rachel, you see, she lives in Rome right now — I want to be in Rome right now — Rome, where you can get authentic, perfect tomato sauce a zillion places every single day. And yet she stayed in and made this one. That sealed the deal.

So what is it with this sauce that it moves people to essays over it, tossing about exclamations like “brilliant!” and “va-va-voom” and promises that “something almost magical happens”? Is it garlic, a slip of red pepper flakes, a glug of red wine or a base of mulched carrots, onion and celery, as so many of us swear by in our best sauce efforts? Is it a spoonful of tomato paste or a pinch of sugar? Is it the best olive oil money can buy? It is none of these things, not a single one: It is butter. And an halved onion, cooked slowly as the sauce plops and glurps on the stove, then discarded when it is done.

... Read the rest of tomato sauce with onion and butter on smittenkitchen.com

black bean soup + toasted cumin seed crema

deb — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 19:00:01 +0000

So, I told you about the brisket. Or, the way we talk about it, thhhuuuuh brisssssket, it’s deliciousness making our syllables stretch out melodramatically. We pulled it into tacos with slaw and pickled onions and it was a great end to a great year. But I bet I know what you’ve been wondering since then, “But no appetizer?” Well, let thie question vex your brain no longer: we had soup. (Jacob, however, got into the margaritas. Again.)

My friend Jocelyn made a wonderful black bean soup and she topped it with a toasted cumin seed crema and I just about died, the crema was so good. I mean, the soup was delicious but the crema was one of those toppings that was in lock-step with the soup: the richest, creamist, smokiest accent to a spicy, hearty soup. Since I’ve been slow cooker obsessed since that very day, I vowed to make a version entirely in my new BFF, and to top it with that toasted cumin seed cream. Frankly, the soup is just an excuse to get to it.

... Read the rest of black bean soup + toasted cumin seed crema on smittenkitchen.com

asparagus, goat cheese and lemon pasta

deb — Sun, 17 May 2009 22:50:53 +0000

A couple weeks ago, I had a fantastic warm asparagus salad at a nearby restaurant, one I immediately swore I’d make at home. It had segments of white and green asparagus tossed with goat cheese and a tarragon and lemony mint vinaigrette and it was piled on a bed of red endive, my favorite. It was stunning. It was delicious. Alas, this is not it. What a tease I am, right?

After trying and failing to find all three elements — the green asparagus, white asparagus and the red endive — for the next two weeks, I gave up. Oh, and sure, you could use all green asparagus and regular pale endive, but you’ve met me, right? I’m a pain in the butt and without the visual, it was going to be no fun at all for me. It would not do.

... Read the rest of asparagus, goat cheese and lemon pasta on smittenkitchen.com

migas with tomato-chipotle coulis

deb — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 19:26:40 +0000

One of the chefs I was most excited to meet at last week’s Bahamas-fest was Sue Torres, the talent behind two of my favorite places to eat in my neighborhood, Rocking Horse (she’s no longer there, but was the one who put their stepped-up Mexican menu on the map) and Sueños (her current, inordinately delicious hidden-away new-Mexican restaurant, replete with a designated tortilla cook). Sure enough, her demo was totally packed and I have her mussel recipe still waiting for me to give it a spin at home, however, when I got home from a week of pork belly and fois gras and four to seven course meals, what I really wanted was something simple.

So I hunted around and hunted around — look, I don’t even want to admit how long I did. I seem to be going through a phase of more extreme than usual pickiness coupled with laziness so basically I was looking for a dinner that took 20 minutes or less to cook and was made of magic — and le voila, Torres’ migas recipe crossed my browser and dinner was, at once, decided.

... Read the rest of migas with tomato-chipotle coulis on smittenkitchen.com

alex’s mom’s stuffed cabbage

deb — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 13:00:22 +0000

I have been promising you my mother-in-law’s recipe for stuffed cabbage or “golubtsy”, which was her mother’s recipe for stuffed cabbage, for ages but do you know what is even sadder about how long it has taken me to get to this? That if I remember correctly, I jotted this recipe down on a page from my planner (a planner! with pages in it! many moons ago, my friends.) while sitting in the back seat as we drove to check out some wedding locations. Alex and I got married in 2005.

And really, I have all sorts of places to blame for how long it has taken me to actually make the recipe at home. The first is Neptune on 1st Avenue, only my favorite place to sit outside for beers in the summertime and if you think that stuffed cabbage can’t taste good after a few Polish beers on a warm night, you obviously haven’t tried it yet. (With a side of kielbasa and pierogis, thank you.) The second is Veselka, also in the East Village — this is where I go for my winter stuffed cabbage fix. (Also cabbage soup. Small hands… smell like cabbage. Nobody else gets that, do they?) And the third is Alex’s mom herself, who often brings us extra that she has made, rendering it completely unnecessary for me to make any effort whatsoever to decipher my four year-old notes.

... Read the rest of alex’s mom’s stuffed cabbage on smittenkitchen.com

crisp black bean tacos with feta and slaw

deb — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 23:24:23 +0000

Let me just get this out of the way before I begin: I’m a little embarrassed by this meal. Not because it took 10 minutes to make, but because it came entirely from things that were already packaged and it tasted… well, not bad, but certainly not like I made any great effort. I bet you can’t wait to sign up, huh?

So why I am telling you about it? Because we’ve all been there, haven’t we? Even in New York City, where you can get anything delivered at any moment’s notice, there are days when one more meal that arrives in plastic-lidded foil containers will send you over the edge. I made this on one of those days. It was 8 p.m., we were both starving and I had one chance to ask Alex to grab something at the store on his way home and I didn’t want to miss it. So I Googled probably one of those most popular searches on the Internet, “10 minute meals” and, well, that pretty much brings us up to today.

... Read the rest of crisp black bean tacos with feta and slaw on smittenkitchen.com

smashed chickpea salad

deb — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 19:07:00 +0000

It has been over one week since I told you about the Light Wheat Bread (and just as long since we’ve been out of it, sob), a post I ended with a promise to tell you about my new favorite sandwich next. But instead I told you about Clementine Cakes and then Mushroom Bourguignon and Chouquettes and do you know what happened? Not a single person griped that they were owed a sandwich. Because really, who does that?

I take issue with the banality of most sandwich recipes. I will actually change the channel if I see a food program that walks viewers through making one of any kind. I mean, is this how low the bar has dropped for “cooking”? But it’s not the shows that are to blame, I think, or not fully: it’s the sandwiches. Most sandwiches are dull. Some sliced stuff and schmear between two uninspired slices of bread. Who can stay awake for that?

... Read the rest of smashed chickpea salad on smittenkitchen.com

potato and artichoke tortilla

deb — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 18:24:14 +0000

Everyone has a different idea of what constitutes eating “healthy” or at the very least, in a manner that diametrically opposes the Thanksgiving through New Years gluttony. Some people eschew meat, for others its just read meat, some give up cheese or bread or fat or potatoes — I mean, you name it, there’s a diet out there that promises that swearing it off is the answer to Thin Thighs in Thirty Days or You in a White Bikini in the Bahamas in 56 Days. …You know, just to throw out a totally arbitrary example.

I am realizing increasingly that I belong to no dieting camp whatsoever. I mean, I consider things like portion size all of the time, and if I had meat in one meal, making sure the next one avoids it but I don’t think that there is a Magical Evil Food that when crossed off your menu will make pounds vanish from your hips.

... Read the rest of potato and artichoke tortilla on smittenkitchen.com

sausage-stuffed potatoes + a green salad

deb — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 21:13:37 +0000

I don’t think I need to tell you that sometimes the tastiest food is not the prettiest. Take a real close look at meat sauce, or shiny, oily cheese draped over tuna or a ground up olive paste and you’ll know why it may be tasty, but it’s not pretty. Meanwhile, I am wary of too-pretty food; perfectly smoothed fondant lids on cakes, making them look like rubber, overly glazed tartlets that look like they’re cellophaned.

And of course, all of this is just an elaboration explanation-slash-apology for the hideously sounding and looking sausage stuffed potatoes that were so good, I will happily eat them only in private if I must, as long as I get to have them again.

... Read the rest of sausage-stuffed potatoes + a green salad on smittenkitchen.com