smitten kitchen » Spanish

spinach and chickpeas

deb — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 16:26:41 +0000

First off, this dish is not called “spinach and chickpeas”, it is espinacas con garbanzos. Don’t you agree? “Spinach and chickpeas” is something you eat because you should — it is healthy and you aspire to be. Espinacas con garbanzos is something you eat because it sounds sexy, and doesn’t taste half bad either. It’s hearty and smoky with a little kick, you eat it on little fried bread toasts at a tapas bar in Spain.

Or, you know, in New York City on another brutally rainy March night. My friend Ang had a tapas pot-luck last Friday (the baby ditched us for a better party at his grandparents house) and, yes, I brought a Spanish dish to a Spanish party that did not include a single format of pork. Wild! Hey, I figured others would have the chorizos and jamón serranos covered. Me, I wanted some Spanish comfort food. I’d tried a version of this dish a few years ago, thanks to the sweet nudging of Ximena at Lobstersquad and instantly loved it. It sounds like it would be too simple to hold your interest, perhaps something you’d eat because you “ought” to, but it tastes like something you’ll crave again and again.

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asparagus with chorizo and croutons

deb — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 02:04:51 +0000

I have been thinking a lot in the last couple of weeks about what it means to cook when you’re pressed for time. I’ve always had the luxury of time. Even when I juggled a full-time job and a site, the sum of my evening tasks were still only to make whatever I felt like making for dinner, and if dinner was done at 10 p.m. instead of 7:30 p.m., we just shrugged it off.

Alas, as you other mamas out there know, the third trimester is all about waking up one day in a frenetic frenzy, as I did out of the blue yesterday morning. If we’re about to go into lockdown for a couple months, there is so much we have left to do: the upholstery needs to be steam-cleaned! The baby’s room needs a dimmer switch! The printer cartridges are, like, totally out of ink! And I haven’t yet learned to cook respectable meals in a minimum of time.

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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.

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gazpacho salad

deb — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 14:21:02 +0000

A small miracle happened in our apartment this week: we paid someone to clean it, and seriously, you could lick the floors [but of course, really shouldn't for a reason that rhymes with Shmatatouille, not that I really want to get into it].

I have spent too much of my adult life trapped in this faux-Buddhist state of thou shalt clean thy own messes; it’s good for you, I reasoned. Cleaning should be a Zen experience. Please, stop laughing. Quit it.

Needless to say, at some point between work and more work, errands and, I don’t know, waking up on Saturday mornings with a desire to leave the apartment and not scrub the edges of it, our little penthouse turned into a place we were not exactly proud of. And when you are as obsessive as I am, this is a very bad thing. I’d look around the apartment before I left each morning and sigh; this is not what I wanted for us, and come home too tired to do anything but sigh at it again.

... Read the rest of gazpacho salad on smittenkitchen.com

arroz con pollo

deb — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 12:44:20 +0000

I’ve already admitted that I’ve been a bit of a slack-ass with the whole cooking dinner on a weekday night, or pretty much any night, thing lately. Since I would hate to deprive you of all of the whiny reasons I’ve been inundating my husband with for not even making half an effort, I’ve decided to translate a few into bytes for you: I’m tiiiiired. I’ve been working soooooo much lately. Traaaaveling too! If I start now, we won’t eat until tomoooooorow. Also: I’m sooooo tiiiiiiired. Charming, right? Bet you wish you were here.

But I think that the one-pot meal could be the cure for all of your kitchen ailments. Don’t feel like cooking? But look–it’s dinner in one pot! Don’t feel like creating a pile of dishes? But it’s just one pot! (And a knife and a plate and a spoon, but shh, I don’t want to scare you off.) Have a lot of people coming over? One steamed vegetable and an easy soup and you’ve got a full-blown meal! Everyone arriving at different times? It’s okay, the one-pot meal is very forgiving of tardiness.

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spaghetti with chorizo and almonds

deb — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 16:42:52 +0000

I cooked dinner Wednesday night for the first time in over a week. I blame the babka. Oh, and also the red velvet cake, and since we’re pointing fingers, that noodle kugel is looking a little guilty too, isn’t it? And three-hour tortillas? Busted as well.

Here’s the thing with taking on more ambitious cooking projects: when I’m done, even the though of a quick dinner of salad and couscous seems outrageous. I mean, we just worked our way through a pile of dishes that could rival that of the diner on the corner after the leather bars let out, and now you suggest I chop some green onions? Are you mad? Bring on the baigan bharta!

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grandmothers of sils’ apple-yogurt cake

deb — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 22:12:30 +0000

I used to be a fennel/anise/black licorice-hater, too. I say “too” because I know that it’s impossible to bring the flavor up without at least someone in the room saying “ew.” Like beets in anything or nuts in cookies, its presence is a deal breaker for a surprising number of people.

But I have always been certain that the foods we like to eat we were introduced to in a way that warmed them to us. Mike and Ikes? Ew. Ouzo with seltzer in tall glasses as we snacked on salty pistachios while sitting out on the balcony of my professor’s hotel room with a handful of my classmates after a long day of painting on the Greek island of Corfu one summer? It was impossible not to love, creating a clear delineation between my anise-hating and anise-loving days on the timeline of my tastebuds.

[Oops, got a little carried away with the Tastebud Timeline idea.]

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tortilla de patatas

deb — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 03:31:50 +0000

Ever since we had dinner at Tia Pol for the first time six months ago, I have been bitten by the tapas bug, and with little warning this wee hallway of a restaurant on 10th Avenue replaced Tabla as my favorite in all of New York City.

I didn’t know that there were any higher small-plate callings than the Floyd Cardoz’s boondhi raita, that is until I tried Alex Raij’s garbanzos fritos, and though it makes me sad to have evolved beyond my Bread Bar obsession, I feel strongly enough about these chickpeas that if you haven’t had them yet, you should close your browser, turn off your computer, get on a plane if you must, wait patiently through the forty minutes it will take just to sit at the bar because these babies will leave your up-to-then favorite bar snack in the dust so quickly, its tasty little head will spin. Be prepared for a fast and fierce addiction.

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fideos with favas and red peppers

deb — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 16:08:39 +0000

Some people are chef-chasers, meal-collectors. Being at the right restaurant exactly when it’s the newest thing so they can say they ate there first, or knew so-and-so would be the next Top Chef long before anyone else is where it’s at. Some want to be the first in line for Chef’s take on ramps, rhubarb, some adored garlic chive tangle and five different soft-shell crab specials each spring. Some people rank bathrooms (no really, they do) at the city’s best eateries. The thing is, I don’t know these people, and secretly, I’m kind of relieved.

For me, restaurants are about something else. I love to go to great ones, glorious places where each and every dish is perfect in a way you hadn’t considered before. Cranberry beans in an artichoke cup? I’m so glad I’ve met you. Seared quartered baby artichokes with pistachios, mache and manchego cheese? Two weeks without you makes me sad. Tabla’s Indian-spiced popcorn? It’s pathetic, but you can actually make my day. In their own ways, restaurants have become my muse. Thus, I didn’t just want to go to The Little Owl for my birthday Monday night because a friend had raved about it after her Food & Wine holiday party, I wanted to go because one glance at the constantly-changing menu told me I’d be brimming with new ideas when I left.

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