Potato Salad with Fresh Herbs

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When I conceived of this salad, I was living in Paris, nursing a killer craving for big American picnic food: fried chicken in Tupperware, carrot salad with raisins, tart lemonade with sprigs of fresh mint.

What I really, really wanted was potato salad. Mounds of it smothered unapologetically in Hellmann’s mayonnaise.

But this was Paris, and Hellmann’s was nowhere to be found (actually, it was but it cost you 12 euros at a specialty shop). As the hot, late July air blew through my French windows, making my own mayonnaise with raw eggs just so that I could tote my nice, dressed salad out to a sunny park sounded like tempting fate.

So I thought to dress my potatoes up with a super lemony vinaigrette, tossing in whatever else was in my kitchen that day (radishes and celery in my case). It turned out to be delicious.

I have made this salad many times over the years. Recently, I unearthed my original scribblings from France, hastily scrawled on supermarket circular. Only then did I realize how different the potato salad that I was making New York was from that one made on that warm Parisian day.

No matter. Whether you add this, or that, or not, you will have something wonderful to eat. Picnic-safe too.

What I make now:

Ingredients:

2 pounds of waxy red potatoes, unpeeled and cut into 1-inch cubes

2 tablespoons of minced fresh herbs (thyme, parsley, rosemary, oregano, and/or dill)

Basic Mustard Vinaigrette:

Juice of one lemon, which should be about 2 tablespoons of lemon juice

1/2 cup olive oil

1 tablespoon of good grainy Dijon mustard

Salt and pepper to taste

How to prepare:

1. Boil the potatoes in a large pot of heavily salted water. You should be able to easily pierce a cube with a paring knife when they are done. Drain the potatoes and let cool.

2. Make the vinaigrette. Pour the vinaigrette over the still warm potatoes (you might want to do this a little bit at a time to avoid dousing them in dressing — something that fat-and-salt-loving me has a hard time not doing). Add the fresh herbs and toss until everything is evenly incorporated.

What I made then:

Ingredients:

1 pound of small Yukon gold potatoes (peeled, quartered, boiled, and cooled)

2-3 stalks of celery, chopped

4-5 small radishes, sliced very thin

2 minced shallots

2 tablespoons of minced fresh dill

Basic Mustard Vinaigrette:

Juice of one lemon

1/2 cup olive oil

1 tablespoon of Dijon mustard

Salt and pepper to taste

How to prepare:

1. In a large bowl, combine all ingredients together. Using a wooden spoon to stir, smash some of the potatoes against the side of the bowl to create texture. Keep stirring until all ingredients are well incorporated. Serve on a bed of lettuce. Can be made a day in advance.

Juicy Skillet Pork Chops

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I’m on the fence about Cook’s Illustrated, the cooking magazine published by America’s Test Kitchen. On the one hand, their recipes work. They really work. Chris Kimball and his team of test cooks try just about every technique in and out of the book to achieve perfection.

Which they do . . . but on the other hand, they can also saddle the average home cook with a severe case of insecurity if he or she decides to cook something a different way.

However, they do come up with really ingenious ideas about how to get consistent and reliable results: flaky pastry? use vodka not water! perfectly cooked steaks with no gray ring of over-cooked protein? start them in the oven and then sear them in a hot pan!

Despite my reluctance to say that there is one and only one way to cook something and make it delicious, sometimes by doing it their way, you really learn and eat something wonderful.

When we got some nice thick-cut pork chops in our CSA share, I immediately thought that the best way to make their super-porky flavor shine would be to do it the Cook’s Illustrated way.

This is not really a recipe, but technique:

Start with your chops. You want wonderful, natural pork chops — not enhanced chops, which are pre-brined. You want them thick and meaty too, between 1/2 and 3/4 of an inch thick. Bone-in, of course. You want to make two perpendicular slits in the fatty edge of each chop. This will prevent your pork chops from curling up as they cook. Rub them on both sides with some nice olive oil. Cook’s Illustrated recommends you sprinkle some sugar on both sides along with your seasoning, but I’ve forgotten sometimes and had it still turn out fine.

If you have an electric hob, turn it on now to medium heat, but don’t put the pan on the burner just yet. You don’t need to do this if you have a gas range.

You want to start them in a cold pan. That’s right. A cold pan. Press the chops down in the pan to make sure that the whole underside of the chop is in contact with its surface.

Now, put the pan on the burner. Turn the heat on to medium. Leave them alone and cook them until they are lightly browned, about 4-9 minutes depending on the thickness of your pork chops. Doing it this way doesn’t get the nice brown crust that starting pork chops off in a hot pan does, but you do get amazingly juicy and evenly-cooked meat. Be sure to listen for gentle sizzling. If your pork chops aren’t gently sizzling, your heat is too low.

Flip your chops over. Cover the pan and reduce the heat to low. The second side will not be as brown as the first. You want to cook your chop until the internal temperature registers 140° — perfectly safe, and perfectly pinkish. Start checking the temperature after 2 minutes, or if you have one of those leave-in thermometers, insert it into the center of the chop and set the timer to go off at 140°.

Remove the pork chops from the pan and let rest for 5 minutes, just enough time to make a quick pan sauce.

White Bean Dip with Sizzled Sage

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Friends are coming over in 15. Need a snappy dip quick! A hurried perusal of the cupboard reveals a can of cannellini beans. Hooray! With an effortless prep, a whiz of the hand-held blender, and a finishing touch of sizzled sage, the party is saved.

Ingredients:

1 can of cannellini beans (or any other kind of white bean), rinsed

Chicken stock

Some fresh or dried herbs (rosemary, sage, and/or thyme) to taste

1-2 cloves of garlic, sliced

Salt and pepper to taste

1 tablespoon of fresh sage, chopped

2 tablespoons olive oil

Special equipment:

A hand-held stick immersion blender

How to prepare:

1. In a small saucepan, combine the beans, the herbs, and the garlic. Add enough chicken stick until the beans are just barely covered. Simmer the beans over medium heat until they are tender and no longer gritty to taste. Remove the pan from the heat. Purée everything in the pan with a hand-held stick immersion blender until the dip is nice and smooth.

2. In a small skillet, heat the olive oil over medium heat. When the oil is not quite smoking, add the sage. Sizzle the leaves quickly in the oil, being careful not to burn them. Add the sizzled sage to the bean dip. Stir to combine. Adjust the seasoning and serve. You can also make this ahead of time and chill it in the refrigerator until you are ready to eat.

Oven-Roasted Baby Back Ribs

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Finger-lickin' good.
It is official: my mother is a kitchen saboteur.

For Valentine’s Day this year, I decided to toss some ribs in the oven and save my boyfriend and myself from a night out. I was thinking something fun to eat. Finger food. Something fast and easy.

I thought of my mom’s fantastic oven-roasted baby back ribs.

When I asked her for the recipe, she casually tossed out something more like a manner than a method with what I realize now to be a completely non-realistic cooking time.

“35 minutes? For real?”

I hooted with joy. Thirty five minutes of roasting meant that I could leave off dinner until the last minute! I could dawdle around the supermarket playing with squeeze bottles of agave syrup and Dijonnaise without feeling the pressure to get going and get home!

So I went about my day, happy and relaxed. Then my mother called somewhere around the dairy section to say that it was actually about 35 minutes . . . after the first hour.

First hour? What first hour! Am I hard of hearing? Does my cellular service suck?

No, I can hear fine. The service is not terrific, but the call was crystal.

My mother had lied. Again!

And again, it turns out, as she had to call back a second time to say that it was actually more like 35 minutes to an hour after the first hour.

Well, mine ended up taking about one hour and 40 minutes. I imagine that that can be a little less or more depending on thick your racks of ribs are.

So here is a great, super easy recipe for juicy, falling-off-the-bone ribs done in your oven.

Seriously, no lie.

Ingredients:

1 or 2 racks of baby back pork ribs

1/3 of a cup of dark brown sugar per rack of ribs

1 heaping tablespoon of steak seasoning or rib rub (I like one with some smoke) per rack of ribs

Special equipment:

One half-size sheet pan

One wire rack to fit the sheet pan

How to prepare:

1. Pre-heat the oven to 375°.

2. The secret to melt-in-your mouth tender ribs? You have to remove the membrane on the back of the pork ribs. It’s super easy to do and allows your ribs to cook nice and flat, without curling up. It also makes them much nicer to eat. Flip the ribs bone-side up. Using the flat handle of a spoon or a butter knife, loosen the membrane on one end of the rack of ribs. Grasp the loosened end with a paper towel and pull the membrane slowly in the direction of the opposite end. It will probably come off in one piece but if not, you can just grab the torn end and continue. To help visualize, here is a pretty great Youtube how-to clip from BBQTalk.

3. In a small bowl, mix together the brown sugar and seasoning with your fingers. After you have dried off your rack of ribs with paper towels, rub the brown sugar-seasoning mix into both sides of the rack. Lay the rib(s) out on the wire rack.

4. Set the racks of ribs in the oven. Carefully pour about 2 1/2 to 3 cups of water into the bottom of the sheet pan. The water should not touch the bottom of the wire rack. Roast the ribs in the oven at 375° for one hour. Lower the temperature to 350° and continue to roast until the ribs are tender and buttery, about 40 minutes to an hour longer depending on the thickness of your rack of ribs. Remove carefully from the oven. Let the ribs rest for 5 to 10 minutes before slicing and serving.

Rick Bayless’s Roasted Tomato and Jalapeño Salsa

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Can anyone resist a big crunchy pile of chips and a bright red bowl of salsa?

I can’t.

It’s my weakness; I find the crunchy saltiness of the chips and the spicy sloppiness of the cool salsa irresistible.

Like everything else, I have been on the hunt for that perfect version.

This doctored-up Rick Bayless recipe comes darn close. It’s really better the next day too.

Ingredients:

2 pounds of plum tomatoes

3 jalapeño peppers, stemmed

1 medium white onion, sliced into thin rings

4 fat cloves of garlic

1 1/2 teaspoons of apple cider vinegar

The juice of 4 limes (maybe 5)

1 bunch of fresh cilantro, chopped (about 1 loosely packed cup)

1 small white onion, minced

Salt to taste

How to prepare:

1. Turn on your oven’s broiler.

2. While the broiler is heating up, spread the tomatoes and the jalapeño peppers out on a cookie sheet. Do not brush them with any oil. Broil them until their skins are blackened in spots and blistered in some parts. Turn the tomatoes and peppers throughout the cooking to make sure that all their sides are evenly colored. Remove the pan from the oven and let everything cool.

3. Set the oven to 425°. Spread the onions out on another cookie sheet, separating the rings. Tuck the garlic underneath the onions and roast in the oven until the onions are soft and starting to brown.

4. Using a food processor, process the onions, garlic, peppers and tomatoes together.

5. In a large bowl, combine the processed mixture with the remaining ingredients. You may want to add more lime juice, depending on how it tastes. Adjust the seasoning and serve.

Super Bowl of Chocolate Chili Con Carne

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A few years ago I read Amy Sutherland’s terrific book Cookoff: Recipe Fever in America. In it, she she follows groups of amateur chefs across the country as they compete in national cooking competitions. Two of the competitions featured in the book are the the big chili cookoffs in Terlingua, Texas: the larger Terlingua International Chili Championship run by the Chili Appreciation Society International, and the smaller, rowdier Original Terlingua International Frank X. Tolbert-Wick Fowler “Behind the Store” Championship Chili Cook-Off.

One day, when I work up the balls and enough chest hair to do so, I would love to fly into Midland and check out the competitions. Sutherland reports them to be macho, testosterone-driven affairs, full of “nudity and carrying-on — like Spring Break only in the high desert.” She is warned by others to not assume that the little old ladies there are grandmotherly (they drink Jägermeister, a lot of it, and will drink you into your grave). People paint their Coleman stoves with images of men “running out from an outhouse with flames shooting out of their behinds.” There are wet tee-shirt contests and lots of trash talk.

Maybe they’ve cleaned up a little bit since Sutherland’s book was published, but I was still about to find these and these on the web without difficulty.

The most important thing to know about chili is that there are rules. Strict, no-funny-business at all, rules.

“In competitive chili,” Sutherland writes, “There is only one bowl of red — meaning cubed meat and absolutely no beans — and you’d better not screw with it.”

Ever since reading about these desert chili-heads, I have been dreaming of coming up with the ultimate recipe for the perfect bowl of red. My recipe is derived from fancy-panted Napa chef Michael Chiarello’s recipe, which means that from the get-go, there is a fair bit of “funny business.”

But it’s effing delicious.

I’ve played with the recipe for several years now and have managed to come up with a version that I adore that also feeds a hungry army of football fans sans légumes.

‘Cause if you know beans about chili, you know chili ain’t got no beans!

Ingredients:

6 pounds of beef chuck or sirloin, cubed

Freshly ground black pepper

Kosher salt

1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon, plus 2 teaspoons

2 teaspoons of ground cumin, plus 4 teaspoons

4 tablespoons of chili con carne seasoning blend, plus 4 heaping tablespoons

Masa harina

Grape seed oil

8 large red onions, minced

12 cloves of garlic, minced

8 jalapeño peppers, sliced thin with seeds and stems removed

6 ounces of tomato paste

4 teaspoons of dried oregano

1 (12-ounce) bottle of beer (ideally lager)

1 (12-ounce) can of fire roasted diced tomato in juices

2 quarts of chicken stock, divided

4.5 ounces of bittersweet chocolate, chopped

How to prepare:

1. Place the meat in a large bowl. Season liberally with salt and pepper. Add 1 teaspoon of the cinnamon, 2 teaspoons of the cumin, and 4 tablespoons of the chili seasoning powder, and 2 heaping tablespoons of masa harina. Mix well with your hands, making sure that all the meat is evenly coated with the spice/corn flour mixture.

2. Preheat a very large cast-iron Dutch oven on the stove over medium heat.* Add enough grapeseed oil to coat the bottom of the pan. Heat the oil until it is almost smoking. Add the coated meat, spreading it out evenly so that it covers the bottom in a single layer. Do not overcrowd the pan — you want the meat to develop a nice crust. When one side is nicely seared, turn each piece with tongs. Once all the sides are seared, remove the meat from the pan let it rest. You will probably need to sear the meat in batches, adding more oil if the pan starts to get dry. Leave the oil and juices in the Dutch oven to sauté the vegetables.

2. When the last batch of meat is done, add the onions and garlic quickly to the pan and sauté for 10 minutes over medium heat (this way, the nice crusty bits on the bottom of the pan don’t get the chance to burn). As they start to caramelize and get soft, scrape up the tasty brown bits stuck to the bottom of the pan. Add the jalapenos and cook for 4 more minutes until they are soft. Add the remaining 4 teaspoons of the cumin, 2 teaspoons of the cinnamon, the oregano, 4 heaping tablespoons of the chili powder, and the tomato paste. Stir to mix everything up evenly and sizzle the tomato paste a little. Stir in the diced tomatoes, beer, and 1 quart of chicken stock. Add the reserved meat and accumulated juices.

3. Bring the pot to a boil and then lower the heat to a slow simmer. You will need to cook everything until the meat is wonderfully tender, about four hours depending on how big your chunks of meat are. Periodically skim the top of the chili. As it thickens, add the remaining quart of chicken stock, a little bit at a time, to keep the liquid level and the consistency consistent. Once the meat is tender, add the chunks of bittersweet chocolate.* Stir until it all melts.

4. Serve topped with sour cream, cheese, and sprigs of cilantro or chopped green onions.

Notes:

• If you’re not making you own chili spice blend, make sure you buy one from a good spice supplier. Sometimes chili powder that you buy in a store is exactly that: one kind of chili, powdered. For this recipe, you want a spice blend. I like one that has some ancho chile in it. Penzey’s blends are wonderful, but for a little bit of real Terlingua, order online from Pendery’s.

• If need be, you can sear the meat in a large skillet, sauté the onions and garlic in it, and then transfer everything to a much larger pot before you add the liquids.

• I used a nice big chunk of Callebaut Bitterweet Belgian Chocolate. See? Lots of funny business here.

• My great friend, Gideon, brought over a bottle of Ghost Pepper Hot Sauce made from bhut jolokia, the hottest pepper in the world. It’s hot. Really, really hot. He put just a touch from the end of a skewer into my big bowl, and that was enough for me. If you are fan of lots of heat, I strongly recommend you give it a try. It adds a terrific, smoky dimension to this chili.

Melissa Clark’s Roasted Broccoli with Shrimp

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I have a big, fat girl-crush on Melissa Clark, food writer and New York Times contributor.

Not only is she beautiful, but her food is beautiful. Her writing is wonderful.

All her recipes work.

And this is one of them. Don’t be fooled by the short list of ingredients; the sum of the parts is a fresh, spicy, unexpected flavor bomb ready in 20 minutes.

As I am currently hoarding all of my chili powder for the Superbowl, I used red pepper flakes instead and found it different, but pretty good too. And don’t forget the lemon!

Ingredients:

2 big heads of broccoli, cut into florets

4 tablespoons of olive oil, plus one more tablespoon

1 teaspoon of cumin seeds

1 teaspoon of coriander seeds

1/8 of a teaspoon of hot chili powder, or red pepper chili flakes to taste

Salt and pepper

1 pound of shrimp, peeled and deveined

The zest from one lemon

Lemon wedges for serving

How to prepare:

1. Preheat your oven to 425°.

2. In a large bowl, toss together the broccoli with the olive oil, cumin seeds, coriander seeds, and chili powder. Season with a generous sprinkle of salt and pepper. Spread the broccoli florets in a single layer on a baking sheet. Roast the broccoli for 10 minutes.

3. Combine the shrimp in a separate bowl with the lemon zest, the remaining tablespoon of olive oil, and a little salt and pepper.

4. After 10 minutes, remove the baking sheet from the oven. Scatter the shrimp over the broccoli. Toss everything together. Spread the shrimp and the broccoli out evenly over the sheet pan. Roast the shrimp and the broccoli together for about 10 minutes more. The shrimp should be just opaque, not overdone, and the broccoli should be nicely golden around the edges.

5. Serve with Basmati rice and lemon wedges on the side.

Cookware Recommendation: Cast-Iron Skillet

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“Believe me, you could get by without me. You could keep on keeping on with your light-weight, dinged-up thing with all that Teflon coating flaking off in scales. But you would be a fool to dismiss my superior heat distribution and non-toxic non-stickiness for that. Come on, I dare you. Go on, fry me!”

Tips:

• Get the 12-inch skillet, 2-inches deep. You won’t regret it.

• Most cast-iron sold nowadays is pre-seasoned, but you will probably find that you will need to reseason it from time to time.

• If you can find some great, greasy, vintage cast-iron at a garage sale, buy it!

• Yes, there are lids. Tempered glass, oven-safe ones. Hooray! Buy them here.

• Ever exfoliate with a sugar scrub in the shower? Notice how nicely moisturizer gets absorbed by your skin afterwards? Your pan likes scrubs too. Seared on crud got your cast-iron surface sticky? Heat your pan over high heat for a minute or two. Sprinkle a teaspoon of salt on your pan with about a teaspoon of vegetable oil. Using an old rag, scrub. Wipe out the salt from your pan. Buff it with a clean corner of your rag. Let cool.

Minute Steak Sandwiches with Caramelized Onions and Smoked Mozzerella

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Minute steak (also known as cube steak) is a thin cut of steak that has been pounded or scored by either a mallet or an electric tenderizer. It cooks pretty quickly (hence the name), and only requires about 1 1/2 to 2 minutes per side to be medium rare.

This sandwich is another terrific suggestion from Tina at High Point Farms! It’s very tasty, very yummy, and very satisfying.

Ingredients:

4 submarine or hoagie rolls

2 medium yellow onions, thinly sliced

3 tablespoons of butter, plus one tablespoon

1 tablespoon of olive oil

2 minute steaks

Salt and pepper

8 ounces of smoked mozzerella, thinly sliced

Dijon mustard

How to prepare:

1. Pat the minute steaks dry with paper towels and generously season both sides with salt and pepper.

2. In a large cast-iron pan, melt 3 tablespoons of butter with the olive oil over medium heat. When the butter starts to foam, add the onions. Sauté the onions until they are soft and caramelized, about 10 minutes. Adjust the seasoning. Remove the onions from the pan and set them aside.

3. Add the steaks to the same pan. There should be enough oil/butter left in the pan, but if not, add a little bit more and wait for it come up to temperature before cooking the steaks. Cook the steaks for about 1 1/2 – 2 minutes per side for medium-rare. Remove the steaks to a plate and let them rest while you toast the bread.

4. Split the submarine rolls and butter each half with the remaining tablespoon of butter. Toast them butter-side up under the broiler until they are golden brown.

5. Slice the minute steaks against the grain into 1/2 inch-wide strips. Divide the onions, steak, and sliced mozzerella into 4 even portions. To assemble, smear the cut-side of each half with Dijon mustard. Arrange the bottom halves of each roll in a single layer on a cookie-sheet. Mound the steak on top of the caramelized onions, and cover everything with slices of smoked mozzerella. Slide the bottom halves under the broiler and cook until the cheese is melted and bubbling. Top with the top-half of the roll and serve immediately.

Oven-Roasted Rabbit with Mustard Sauce

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2011.

The Chinese Lunar Calendar has this year marked at The Year of the Rabbit. I do love rabbits (cute and delicious) and like the idea of marking the occasion with a very Burgundian kind of dish, a nice marriage of my French culinary inclinations and my family heritage.

If you have never butchered a rabbit before, I urge you to get yourself a whole one and give it a go. You can watch a good how-to video featuring Marlow and Sons‘s Sean Rembold, or you can follow this pretty good step-by-step from Saveur here.

Or you can have your butcher do it. That’s probably the easiest thing.

Or, you can substitute a nice chicken for the rabbit. Chicken goes marvelously well with this sauce too.

The sauce is amazing. Really, really great. Especially if you get yourself some very excellent pancetta, sliced very thinly (I love La Quercia). If you roast or boil some potatoes to sop up the extra creaminess, you won’t regret it.

This recipe I think originally came from Chez Panisse. You have a little flexibility with the proportions depending on how mustardy you want it.

Ingredients:

One whole rabbit or chicken cut into pieces

Between 3/4 to 1 cup of crème fraîche

Between 1/2 to 3/4 of a cup of good quality Dijon mustard

1 tablespoon of chopped fresh thyme

1 tablespoon of chopped fresh sage

3 ounces of thinly sliced pancetta, cut into thin strips

4 cloves of garlic, thinly sliced

2 bay leaves

About a cup of chicken stock or white wine

About 1/2 cup of heavy cream

Salt and pepper

How to prepare:

1. In a large bowl, cover the rabbit or chicken with all of the ingredients except for the chicken stock or white wine, and the heavy cream. Using your hands, mix everything together, making sure that all of the rabbit or chicken pieces are evenly coated. Cover the bowl and let everything sit at room temperature for about an hour, or overnight in the refrigerator.

2. Preheat your oven to 350°. After the rabbit or chicken has marinated for about an hour, spread the pieces out in a single layer on the bottom of a large cast-iron pan. Top the pieces with any remaining marinade. Roast the rabbit or chicken in the oven until they are cooked through, about 45 minutes.* If your rabbit or chicken is small, you might want to check it a little earlier.

3. Transfer the cooked rabbit or chicken pieces to a serving dish while you finish the sauce. Put the cast-iron pan on the stove over medium to medium-high heat. Add the chicken stock or white wine. Using a wooden spoon or a flat whisk, incorporate the added liquid to the sauce and pan juices. Add the heavy cream. Lower the heat so that the sauce is at a good simmer and reduce the sauce until it is thick and creamy. Adjust the seasoning* and pour it over the rabbit and chicken pieces. Serve immediately.

Notes:

If the rabbit or chicken appears to be drying out in the cooking, add some stock or white wine to the pan.

As the mustard and pancetta add a good amount of salt themselves, adjust the seasoning at the end so that the dish doesn’t end up over-salted.