smitten kitchen

We had an election returns nail-biting and wine-drinking gathering last night (I refused to call it a party until given good reason to) and so, well, to say I’m a bit slow today might be a bit of an understatement. That said, even as I scrubbed grimy, chocolaty fingersmears off the sides of champagne flutes this morning with a raging morning-after headache, I never regret a good party.

Nothing worse than coming to a party around dinnertime that doesn’t actually provide dinner. But, since I didn’t want to have a dinner party, but the kind where you could come and go as your schedule allowed, hot food was out. Instead, we settled on cheese and breads, olives and salads, like this one.

Now, I love cauliflower. I always have. I like it in pasta, I like it in gratins (coming soon!), I like this dead-easy silky cauliflower soup and I like it curries and salads.

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As Cathy so eloquently navigates on her site, cooking in New York City isn’t exactly a given/mandatory act, or certainly not the way it would be in a place that doesn’t have umpteen restaurant and take-out options in a four block radius. It very much a choice, something one opts to do out of interest in choosing what goes into their mouths in a place that makes it really easy to forgo this choice. Honestly, it’s not uncommon to look at an apartment in New York City and exclaim “Awesome! They just renovated the kitchen!” only to learn that new cabinets and appliances were put in two tenants ago, but neither got to turning on the oven. (Ahem.)

Despite running this site, enjoying cooking and being naturally curious about new recipes and trying ingredient combinations, it has never been cooking-or-bust for me. If I’m tired or uninspired, I’ve got no issue ordering a savory crepe from down the street or even a grilled cheese sandwich from one of the many diners around. I welcome the lack of dishes at the end of the evening (even while I look guiltily at all of the waste created from take-out containers.) It’s because of this that on the occasion that I make something I’m not head-over-heels in love with, it’s that much more insult to injury. I could have eaten anything in the world for dinner, but instead, I’m pushing this salad around my plate after lugging groceries up the stairs and nearly an hour of prep.

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Do you ever have those recipes where are you just positively, absolutely certain that they will be terrible and that you shouldn’t make them… and yet, you are inexplicably drawn to them and know they’re not going to stop nudging you until you cave? Right, so this was one of those.

You see, several years ago, I was watching some undoubtedly average “healthy cooking” show where the chef suggested that one take half the pasta they wish to eat, replace it with chunks of cauliflower, boil them together and then cover it with marinara sauce. Even though I never made it or even considered making it, it turned my stomach so much that to this day, I can’t seem to forget it. Yes, let’s cook cauliflower in the least appetizing way possible because it is “health food.” Right. Where do I sign up?!

This was among the reasons that I approached the this dish from my other new favorite cookbook, Chez Panisse Vegetables, with great trepidation. It involved several things that give me pause, the first being that combination of cauliflower and pasta which reminded me of that fateful, stomach-turning show. Yet the cauliflower was just one of the things that so far exceeded my expectations of this dish, we are actually venturing into “mind was blown” territory–crunchy, nutty and this might be the only way I cook it for now on. (Just kidding! Er, maybe.)

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Considering that I was on a two year extended Indian cooking kick before I started this site, I find it odd that I have included but one Indian-spiced recipe in the time since. I’m not sure if others do this, but I tend to go in and out of food crazes — currently, the absolutely only thing I want to eat after the gym is tofu pad thai, which doesn’t sound so horrible until you consider that I hit the gym three times a week, and no doubt reverse its effects just as often. I’ve gone through similar phases with poached eggs (atop anything), dinners of asparagus and roasted tiny red potatoes (only), dumplings, and for two torturous months of Alex’s life, a certain Belgian Endive and Grain Mustard salad of Nigella Lawson’s I fiended for, even first thing in the morning.

The Indian cooking bender was no different. What I loved was that you would take the simplest ingredients and render them into hearty, filling and unbelievably healthy dishes, and blow your expectations of lentils out of the water. Their fiscal smarts also cannot be overlooked. Once we’d bought the six or seven spices we continually came back to, we’d stand flabbergasted at the register as our lentils, cauliflower, potatoes and peas came to a mere $5 — and created leftovers that were as good if not better than they were the first day. But the real Indian food addiction was those spices; once they got under my skin (and permanently stained several cooking implements), I couldn’t stop itching for more of them. I became, excruciatingly enough, a cumin seed junkie.

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Oh boy, so we already know what a pest I can be, right? Well, yesterday I had the honor of running what should have been simple errands and yet each was more aggravating than the last, from the Verizon guy that seriously did not understand what to do with my $100 phone credit, the dress which simply did not exist and a line of ten people keeping me from just asking where it could be found and an Aveda employee, oh just don’t get me started because I have nothing nice to say about their eerie breed of worker ants on 5th Avenue. When I got home, frozen like a cranky popsicle, I eagerly dug into the bag of groceries Alex had picked up for our dinner only to find that the store had only white cauliflower left, and I’d wanted the purple, orange and green! I decided that the recipe was boring and I didn’t want to make it at all if it couldn’t be pretty, and oh my god, could I be more annoying?

I was talked back into cooking with the lure of an attitude-adjusting peanut butter cookie from Billy’s Bakery. Have I told you how awesome they are? I know, everyone has had peanut butter cookies before and they’re fairly basic to make, all bearing the signature fork criss-cross mark on top but these, these are something above-and-beyond. After much analysis, as they are kind enough to frequently leave samples out when I come in to get coffee, I’ve determined that the root of their awesomeness is a mixture of chunky peanut butter, peanut butter chips and a light sprinkling with sugar that superfine, indeed. When I find an excuse besides filling our gullets, I promise to try to make my own Billys-style transcendently good peanut butter cookies to share with those of you scattered far from NYC’s west side.

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