smitten kitchen

Five Bits of Housekeeping

• After a series of unfortunate kitchen mishaps over the last week, I decided to give up cooking for at least a couple days and focus my efforts instead on mixology at my friend Jocelyn’s Oscar Party on Sunday night. I guest-blogged Dove Cocktails over on her site today, though I prefer to call them Pomegranate Margaritas. [Dove Cocktails at Pixxiestails.com]
• Earlier this month, Alex and I took some photos of two of our favorite chocolate shops in New York City, Li-Lac Chocolates in the West Village and Jacques Torres in Dumbo. You can see them on Priceless.com. [Jacques Torres on Priceless.com, Li-Lac on Priceless.com]

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Seeing as I am never short on opinion on anything–most especially when it comes to many Food Network chefs that so often grace my television set, Alex calls the Sunday noontime shows my “stories”–I can’t believe I haven’t previously said a single word about Giada DeLaurentis. Let me redress that right now: I really want to like her–and no, not in the way that my husband does (busted!). I’ll see her cooking something and it always looks pretty good and like it could be tasty, but never, and I mean ever, do I feel any great need to cook the recipe for myself.

I think what it comes down to is that all of her recipes seem to be missing a little something, something that would make it more interesting. Like, you made pesto and added a swapped out a little mint for basil? Whoa. Where’d you come up with that! You add crushed almond cookies over an ice cream sundae to give it an “authentic Italian flavor”? I’m bowled over, here. But less sarcastically: does this actually improve it, or just make it different?

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What’s on your list? You know, the running one you keep in your head, in a series of Post-It notes spread across all surfaces of your life, or if you are particularly scary kooky, on a spreadsheet? Me, I’ve got several lists. There’s the Apartment Want This list, because, oh, how I covet the home furnishings; the Go Here list, which holds my in- and outside NYC destination dreams; the Read This list, which I pretty much avoid, and the Listen to This list with all of the music I would like to download and shake my booty arrhythmically to were I not fascistly opposed to DRM.

A then there is the Cook This list, all 300+ items long. This one neither makes me feel bad about my financial limitations (like the Apartment list), vacation time availability (like the Go Here list), my Web-ruined attention span when it comes to content running more than 500 words (like the Read This list), or what happens when you let a bunch of people in board rooms decide how music should be sold (like the Listen list). Sure, I don’t have time to get to all of the items on the Cook This list, but there’s a “yet” in there and that “yet” and that means everything.

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Seeing that it is a whole eleven days into aught-eight, I’m going to stagger a guess that you’re sick of carrot sticks by now. But I don’t want you to feel bad about it. We all hit that wall between our ambition and the reality that being good all of the time is no fun from time to time. Hey, some of us walked right past the gym last night and proceeded to go shopping instead. I’m just saying.

But since carrot sticks are inherently good, and good for you things, I see no reason to throw them out with the resolutions bathwater. Because what if that, uh, bathwater was bright and tangy? What if had a buttery dill vibe? What if it had a kick of garlic? What if you pickled your carrot sticks? If you were me, you would not be able to keep your tongs out of the jar. I had one of those “oh, let me try one and see how they came out” moments before I went to work Thursday morning. Then I tried another one. And another. Um, I had pickled carrot sticks for breakfast–I am gross. But these are not.

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When I made my version of baked ratatouille back in July, I had intended to follow up with suggestions of other things you could do with leftovers, or leftover ingredients, as I always have leftover components but have not yet found a store that will sell me two-thirds of one zucchini and a half an eggplant. I really hate having a quarter eggplant leftover, because I’m very unlikely to use it and incapable of throwing it away, so what usually happens is I stash it in the fridge where it gets forgotten about, rots, is found a month later as when I scream in horror and throw it away afterall, having flashbacks to that time I lived with three friends and we were cleaning out the fridge and found something completely awful way in the back and Dave said “sorry, that was my kiwi” and I was like, “uh, that’s a lemon.”

I digress. Here are some of the other ways we have used elements of this non-traditional “ratatouille”:

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