smitten kitchen » Italian

artichoke-olive crostini

deb — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 16:44:33 +0000

My husband and I have different packing personalities. First, I need a clean apartment, you know, before I wreck sections of it at a time. Then I need to go through every single thing we own before any of it gets packed and determine whether it should stay or does it need to go. I cannot stand the thought of moving, well, useless baggage to a new and supposedly clean slate of an apartment. Then each box has to have a separate topic; if desk stuff gets in with book stuff, I get itchy and start pacing the floor. How does Alex pack? Oh, he puts stuff in boxes until everything's packed. I probably don't need to tell you who is better at getting the job done.

My method doesn't just apply to boxes. I need to feel like my life is, like, totally in order before breaking it down and taping it up. I realized when I talked about braising artichokes last week that I hadn't even told you about revisiting my favorite quick party food starring them and people, I cannot pack another box until I get this off my obviously very disorganized plate. (Like I said, good thing I'm married to someone with no such packing hang-ups.)

I briefly mentioned these crostini over two years ago, in what I swear up and down is the worst photo on this entire site. I can't even look at it. I had no choice but to make it again -- also because it is delicious -- when we had people over in January. You can make it from things in a well-stocked pantry: a can of artichoke hearts, some capers, a jar or can of good green olives, a clove of garlic and olive oil. It couldn't be easier and although the hideous shade of green has taunted me in these photos too, it's so not the point. This stuff is addictive and when you put it out with toasted slices of baguette that have been rubbed with a halved garlic clove, people will ignore almost anything else on the table. You know, until you bust out the gougeres.

One year ago: Spring Panzanella

Two years ago: Artichoke, Cranberry Bean and Arugula Salad

chicken milanese + an escarole salad

deb — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 00:16:33 +0000

I have a new, colossal Food Network crush on Secrets of a Restaurant Chef and the first time I saw the show, I completely forgot every food personal crush that had come before. “Ina Garten who?” “Michael Chiarello? I never heard of him.” Because seriously, Anne Burell trumps all that came before. She’s got the kind of real cooking and fresh ideas you’d hope for from a television show, but too rarely get. I immediately want to make everything she does.

And if I saw chicken milanese on a restaurant menu, I wouldn’t order it. If you told me you were breading and frying chicken cutlets for dinner, I’d feign excitement but inwardly groan. Because if there are two foods in the world that will never hold my interest, they’d be chicken cutlets and anything that has been dredged in breadcrumbs and fried. I find the former bland and the latter makes everything taste the same, not that I need to learn how to form an opinion or anything. Yet, when Ms. Burell made it, I counted down the days until I could find an excuse to make it, which brings us to Tuesday night’s inauguration dinner party (where the caramel sauce was homemade, ahem, but that story for a different day).

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bittersweet chocolate and pear cake

deb — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 15:32:37 +0000

Almost two years ago, Alex and I met friends for dinner at Al Di La, an always-packed, funky mom-and-pop Italian restaurant in Park Slope that not only doesn’t take reservations, it has no room for you to stand around while you wait for one (unless you go to the adjacent wine bar). It helps to know someone who works there.

Before we went, Alex dug up their menu online (does anyone remember life back when you actually had to arrive at a restaurant to find out what they served? Probably less tripe and rabbits feet on the menu, eh?) and decided at that very moment that we must order the torta di pere, a bittersweet chocolate and pear cake. “Fruit and chocolate together?” I said, “Why is this necessary?” as I had always insisted that they were better apart.

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fig and walnut biscotti

deb — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 21:49:24 +0000

Lest you think my running of at the mouth about the evils of dieting meant that I was going to spend this month in the pursuit of only earnest foods, let me set that straight right now: all weekend, I craved a cookie and by Sunday, I’d had enough. No, I wasn’t going to break out the piping bags or the heavy cream ganaches, but when I need something sweet, I have learned that it’s better to have one and move on than to snack on twent-five other odd ends instead, oh, and still crave a cookie.

As far as my cookie demands went, biscotti seemed a perfect compromise. A little less rich, sweet and heavy than most cookies, they go better with tea, coffee or your morning yogurt (guilty as charged) than they do wtih a platter of even more indulgent desserts. I’d had this recipe from Gina DePalma, pastry chef at Babbo, bookmarked for years, and seeing as I am still wading through pounds of nuts and had some sorry-looking figs in the pantry, it seemed like perfect timing.

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meatballs and spaghetti

deb — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 14:00:34 +0000

[Guest photography by Elizabeth Bick] A few weeks ago, over a couple ~~bottles~~ glasses of wine, my friend Liz, a photographer, and I got to discussing the photography in the smittenkitchen, and she said she was dying to come in and take some pictures of me at “work” one day. We started fantasizing about doing a 1950s Mad Men-style shoot, rollers in the hair, a frilly but perfectly tailored apron and classic home cooking. In reality, the rollers and the silly apron didn’t quite happen, but Liz came over earlier this week (and then our other friends, a couple hours later for dinner) and we had a blast. So please welcome here today our very first smittenkitchen guest photographer, Elizabeth Bick. I suspect you’ll be as wowed by her photos as I am. [Oh, and in case you're wondering, I do cook everyday in full lip gloss and an apron coordinated with my potholders. I can't believe you even had to ask!]

Living in New York City, a place where you barely have to walk 10 blocks to find shaved black truffles over artisanal french fries or a fois-stuffed date by a chef with their name on that door, the one a few doors down and several products in the frozen food aisle, I couldn’t honestly give a damn about making futsy food like that at home. By the time I climb my 51 stairs to my apartment in two-inch heels with three heavy bags and, a dripping umbrella and a box of books our house guest has forwarded here, all I am thinking about is the kind of meal that will cancel it all out, and that meal involves not a single ingredient cooked sous-vide.

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chocolate hazelnut biscotti

deb — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 17:38:24 +0000

Last week I stumbled into my new favorite coffee shop for The Latest Morning Coffee, Ever because I am still adjusting to this new schedule of having “everything” but also “anything” to do at any given time.

[One of these days I'll get into all of these changes--the way that I stomp on the grave of business casual attire; the fact that, yes, I still get up early each day and shower and put on mascara; oh, and more relevantly to this site, the breakfasts and lunches I put together (that is, once I get past the yogurt and PB&J sandwich phase, though no promises that will be be happening any time soon)--but for now, suffice it to say that I am still in the Adjustment Phase... Hence the 12:30 p.m. "morning coffee."]

As it was obviously time for lunch–but still, my internal screams for delicious, bitter, cold coffee demanded to be placated–my stomach was grumbling as I walked in, and I had zero resistance when my hand literally bumped into the jar of chocolate-hazelnut biscotti while going to order a much-more-earnest skim latte. And while that wee biscotti was quite delicious, especially once dunked* in my coffee, it served to remind me that I am so overdue to make a batch of real biscotti.

... Read the rest of chocolate hazelnut biscotti on smittenkitchen.com

almond biscotti

deb — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 18:30:02 +0000

This biscotti is what I like to think of as a Hole in One Recipe. And I know what you’re thinking, “Deb, golf? You never seemed the type.” And you’d be exactly correct; willingly standing outside in the heat and humidity for hours at a time wearing funny shoes is an enigma to me. But a hole in one? This I can compute.

You see, sometimes it takes several tries to come up with the recipe you’d hope for to make the thing you crave exactly as you are sure it should be–for example, I have not yet found the perfect yellow layer cake and I’m still remiss over my two recent butterscotch pudding disasters. But biscotti? I got what I wanted on the very first try.

... Read the rest of almond biscotti on smittenkitchen.com

seven-yolk pasta dough

deb — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 21:13:25 +0000

Last month, I was cleaning photos off on my old hard drive and discovered a glaring oversight on my food blogging part: I had never told you about one of my proudest kitchen triumphs to date, mastering the pasta nest!

By “pasta nest” I mean the method of creating a well inside a mound of flour, placing several egg yolks in the center and creating pasta dough with your fingertips alone. Why is this process so intimidating? Don’t countless cooks all over Italy do precisely this every single day without fail? Clearly, they have never read Jeffrey Steingarten, who I alone blame for my fear of The Nest.

“… I ran into a problem,” Steingarten writes in The Man Who Ate Everything.

As I began to incorporate flour from the crater’s inner wall, a wavelet of egg slashed over the top, causing a serious erosion problem, and when I nimble scooped up a handful of flour and from the stable side of the mound and used it to stanch the flow, the crate collapsed. A torrent of egg yolks, now thick with flour and cornmeal, surged across the table, carried a pile of chopped garlic, and like molten lava rolling over a Hawaiin housing development, leaving death and destruction in its wake, headed toward my handwritten notes. As I snatched away the notebook, the flood plunged on, lifting two rosemary branches as though they were matchsticks and cascading over the edge of the table and into an open silverware drawer…

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pizza, updated

deb — Sun, 02 Sep 2007 22:07:24 +0000

Are you in town this weekend while all the good people of the US and A have jetted to some, any edge of the country? Do you not feel bad because it is so gorgeous out, you have to pinch yourself to believe it is so, and now that the city has emptied out you have it the playground all to yourself for once?

Fine, as usual I am talking about me, me me, but it doesn’t mean that I don’t hope you have it this good. Walking around the city on these three off-days of the year when all the sidewalk-cloggers had the good sense to scatter elsewhere is a dream. You can make pretend, once again, that the land is yours alone, and you’ll put your house right there and your boat tied to that pier and when you’re hungry for a snack, you’ll climb into the cave at Murray’s and whittle yourself a little something to schmear on a tear of a Balthazar baguette. You won’t have to share the swing set with any short people and when you go the Union Square Greenmarket, you won’t be knocked into even once. At 4 p.m., good tomatoes will remain.

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lemon risotto

deb — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 04:18:51 +0000

I hate clutter. You might think that this means that I live a Type A sort of white glove test-passing existence, but anyone who knows me can vouch wholeheartedly that I do not. Because I’m lazy. But every so often (er, 28 days or so) I go on a cleaning bender and purge and sweep to my heart’s content. My inboxes get Bit Literate, absurdly insignificant things get vacuumed (dusty ledge around the walls of the apartment, your days are numbered) and things cluttered in this ever-expanding document called “to blog” get purged, well, onto your screens.

I’ve gotten especially behind this month, so I hope you don’t mind that I dump five ideas onto you and then move onto what I really want to talk about, this new awesome thing that rhymes with nacro and nens. Sad but true, this entry is the equivalent of bartering two more bites of broccoli at the dinner table to ensure that you can get a scoop of Breyers Neapolitan for dessert, but like the brown, white and pink-striped stuff always was, I’ll try to make it completely worth it in the end.

... Read the rest of lemon risotto on smittenkitchen.com