Tag: recipes

Taco Salad

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Taco salad is easy to mock. Is it a salad? Isn’t it just a giant fried flour tortilla bowl full of calories? When Budweiser can sell beer by exploiting taco salad’s paradoxical nature in a very funny commercial, you know it probably isn’t that good for you.

But why can’t it be? Why not swap out the edible bowl for a just a few high-quality tortilla chips, and use really good, super lean grass-fed beef. Why not replace the iceberg lettuce (John Waters always calls iceberg lettuce the polyester of greens) with bright, crunchy, vitamin-packed Romaine? Why not throw in some organic cherry tomatoes? Just a sprinkling of good shredded cheese, the hormone-free stuff?

And forget the heavy Ranch dressing or giant scoop of sour cream. If your core ingredients are good, just a spritz of lime juice should do the trick.

Ingredients:

1 pound of very lean ground beef

2 tablespoons of olive oil

1 white onion, chopped

2-3 garlic cloves, minced

1/2 teaspoon of dried oregano

1/2 teaspoon of ground cumin

1/2 teaspoon of paprika

1/4 teaspoon of chili powder

Salt and pepper

1 head of Romaine lettuce, cut crosswise into 1/4-inch ribbons

1 cup of shredded cheese

1 pint of cherry tomatoes, diced

Tortilla chips

Lime wedges

How to prepare:

1. Heat the oil in a large heavy saucepan over medium-high heat. Add onion and garlic. Sauté them together until the onion is slightly softened, approximately 2-3 minutes. Add the beef and the spices. Cook until the meat is no longer pink. Adjust the seasoning. Turn off the heat and begin assembling the salad.

2. Make a bed of about a cup of lettuce in the bottoms of 4 good-sized individual salad bowls. Drain the beef if there seems to be a lot of oil or liquid in the bottom of the pan. Top each bed of lettuce with a scoop of ground beef, followed with the cheese, and then the diced tomatoes. Squeeze a lime wedge or two over the top. Serve with chips on the side.

Chicken Florentine

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Last night, I had some chicken breast in the fridge that I had to do something with, along with some baby spinach and a nice wedge of Parmesan. As I was thinking, this image of sliced, pan-fried chicken smothered in cream sauce on a bed of fettucini suddenly came floating up to the surface of my mind.

Before I knew it, I had recreated a night at the Olive Garden.

How did this happen? It was as if I had taken a trip on the High School Nostalgia Express. Maybe I was subconsciously channeling those commercials that have been airing on television lately for the Olive Garden cooking school in Tuscany. The one where they presumably teach students how to make American Chain-Restaurant food in middle of the rolling Tuscan hills.

Because Chicken Florentine is really American. As American as apple pie. You’ll never find it in Italy. It is interesting to note though that, historically speaking, the origins of “Florentine” preparation trace their roots back to Florence-born Catherine de’Medici and her legendary merry band of French cooks. What made a dish “Florentine” was not the spinach, but the white sauce that her French cooks made: the besciamella, or béchamel.

It’s anyone’s guess how spinach got involved in all of this.

But just because Chicken Florentine might find its roots more in Hoboken than Florence, that doesn’t necessarily make it bad. In fact, on a cold spring night, it’s pretty darn good.

God bless the USA!

Ingredients:

4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts

1/4 cup of flour

Salt and pepper

4 tablespoons of olive oil

2 tablespoons of butter

1/2 cup of white wine

2 packed cups of baby spinach

4 cloves of garlic, minced

1 1/2 cups of heavy cream

1 cup of freshly grated Parmesan

A healthy pinch of freshly grated nutmeg

Salt and pepper to taste

1/2 pound of dried fettucini

How to prepare:

1. Bring a large pot of salted water to boil.

2. In the meanwhile, pat the chicken breast dry with paper towels. Sprinkle each breast liberally with salt and pepper on all sides. Dredge them in the flour, and shake off any excess. In a large skillet, heat the olive oil over medium heat until it is shimmering. Add the chicken breasts to the pan in a single layer. Pan-fry them until they are golden-brown on both sides and cooked through, about 5 minutes per side. Transfer them to a plate while you prepare the rest of the dish.

3. Your water should be boiling by now. Add the fettucini and boil them until they are al dente. Drain the pasta and set aside if it is done before all the other elements.

4. While the fettucini is boiling, melt the 2 tablespoons of butter in the same skillet over medium heat. Add the white wine to the pan, stirring to scrape up and dissolve any of the browned bits on the bottom of the skillet. Add the spinach and the garlic. When the spinach has wilted slightly, add the cream, Parmesan, and nutmeg. Stir to combine. Simmer the mixture, stirring often, until the sauce has begun to thicken. Adjust the seasoning carefully (the cheese should add a fair amount of saltiness).

5. Cut each chicken breast into half-inch slices. Mound a quarter of the fettucini in a warm pasta bowl. Top the fettucini with a sliced chicken breast and spoon a quarter of the sauce on top. For a little brightness, you could serve the bowls with a nice, fat lemon wedge to squeeze.

Spicy Miso Dip

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I recently made dinner for Laura at her apartment. Saddled with overwhelming piles of work, she seemed on the verge of exhaustion and in much need of some TLC. As I like playing personal chef, I was more than happy to oblige.

I didn’t have much for lunch that day and was scrounging around in her fridge for something to nibble on while cooking. She directed me to some miso dip that she had made earlier, and a nice little mound of snow peas. Maybe she hadn’t thought that I would eat all of her snow peas and inhale the dip like air . . . but I did.

Sorry, Laura.

This recipe is a riff on her riff on a recipe posted by blogger extraordinaire, Heidi Swanson. Heidi’s website (she has a cookbook too), 101 Cookbooks, is a treasure trove of delicious, healthy recipes that taste great and make you feel good. As the weather gets oh-so-slowly warmer, eating more fruits and vegetables sounds like a welcome and wholesome idea.

Ingredients:

3 ounces of white miso paste

3 ounces of red miso paste

1/4 cup of sake

1/2 cup of mirin

4 tablespoons of agave syrup

Red chili pepper flakes to taste

How to prepare:

1. Combine the miso pastes, the sake, the mirin, and the agave in a small saucepan. Bring the mixture to a boil over. Once the mixture has started to boil, reduce the heat and simmer it for about 20 minutes, whisking occasionally. You want the dip to thicken a bit.

2. Once it has thickened, add the chili pepper flakes. Remove the dip from the heat and let cool. The dip will keep in the refrigerator for between 1-2 weeks. Serve with fresh vegetables, blanched asparagus, anything really!

Gabrielle Hamilton’s Braised Rabbit

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Rabbit is a tricky thing to cook. Braising is the usual method — something that always always puzzles me as rabbit is very lean, and there really isn’t any tough connective tissue to break down by slow, low cooking.

Shorts ribs, it is definitely not.

I also have this sad tendency to slightly overcook my rabbit, leaving the meat a little on the tough side. It’s as if the bunny was tensing up in order to leap out of the pot to give me the finger.

But when I tried Gabrielle Hamilton’s recipe for braised rabbit published in the New York Time a few weeks ago, the dish turned out like a dream.

I didn’t actually have the 8 hind legs called for in the recipe, just one rabbit that I had butchered myself into 6 pieces. If you have never broken down a whole rabbit before, here is a good step-by-step tutorial from Saveur. If I were to do it again, I might butcher two rabbits — leaving me with a nice mess of fore and hind legs — and save the loins and saddles for another dish calling for rolling and stuffing.

Ingredients:

1 rabbit (about 2 1/2 pounds), cut into 6 pieces

Salt and pepper

2 tablespoons of vegetable oil

4 large shallots, thinly sliced

1/3 of a cup of cornichons, halved

1/4 of a cup or cornichon brine

3 tablespoons of white wine vinegar

3-4 cups of chicken stock

4 tablespoons of butter, cut into cubes

1/3 of a cup of Italian parsley, chopped

1. Preheat the oven to 350°.

2. Season the rabbit pieces liberally with salt and pepper. In a large, heavy Dutch oven, heat the two tablespoons of vegetable oil over medium-high heat until it starts to shimmer. Sear the rabbit pieces on both sides. Transfer the browned pieces to a plate.

3. Lower the heat to medium. In the same pan, sauté the shallots until they are tender but not browned. Add the cornichons, brine, and vinegar. Bring everything up to a simmer. Return the rabbit pieces and any accumulated juices to the pan, spreading the rabbit out as evenly as you can over the bottom. Add just enough chicken stock so that the rabbit pieces are covered by about 1/2 inch of liquid. Bring the liquid to a boil and then turn off the heat.

4. Cover the pan and bake until the rabbit is tender, about 45 minutes. The next time I do this, I might use a meat thermometer. Rabbit should be done at 135° – 140°. The recipe says that if you can easily bend the leg at the joint, your bunny is done.

5. Remove the pan from the oven and transfer the rabbit pieces to a plate. Keep the pieces warm while you finish the sauce. Return the pan to the stove top and boil the liquid until the sauce has been reduced by about half. Whisk in the cubes of butter one at a time. The sauce should be nice and glossy. Add the rabbit back to the pan to just reheat it. Before serving, stir in the parsley. 

Strawberries Dipped in Chocolate Caramel Sauce

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Chocolate-covered strawberries get a bad rap. It’s perhaps not so surprising: the majority of ones in this country are sold in February, when strawberries are completely out-of-season.

Now I have nothing against partaking in enrobed fruit for Valentine’s Day, but strawberries bought in the middle of winter are usually shipped from South America, freakishly oversized, and stunningly tasteless despite their glossy red exteriors.

The chocolate sarcophagus they come in isn’t always very appetizing either.

But it is finally springtime — officially the start of strawberry season. Now is the time to see that chocolate-covered strawberries done right can be a sinfully sloppy mess.

How can you tell if a strawberry is ripe?

Smell it. Does it smell like a strawberry? No? Put it down. Walk away. Yes? Is it a full-on, luscious, musky strawberry-smell? Buy. Now. Buy buckets of them.

This sauce is fantastic. So easy and so versatile. Dredge fruit in it, or even better, drizzle warm gobs of it over vanilla-bean gelato. Or just eat it out of the pot. It’s fabulous.

Ingredients:

1 pint of ripe strawberries, washed and gently patted dry

1/4 cup of sugar

1/2 cup of heavy cream

2 ounces of semi-sweet chocolate (no more than 70% cacao), broken into smaller pieces

1/8 teaspoon of sea salt

How to prepare:

1. Cook the sugar in a small dry saucepan over moderately high heat, undisturbed, until it begins to melt, about 2 minutes. Continue to cook, tipping the pan from one side to the other, until the sugar has melted into a deep golden caramel, about 1 to 2 minutes. To help visualize this, here is a handy profanity-free video with Gordon Ramsay.

2. Remove the caramel from the heat and carefully pour in the cream. The cream will steam and bubble vigorously. Once the bubbles begin to subside, return pan to moderately low heat and cook, stirring or whisking constantly, until the caramel has dissolved. If the caramel does not seem to dissolve completely, add 1 to 2 teaspoons of water at a time, stirring, until it has dissolved.

3. Turn off the heat and continue to stir or whisk the caramel to cool it down a little bit. Add the chocolate and the salt. Stir or whisk the chocolate into the caramel. The sauce should be thick and glossy when you are finished.

4. Dip the strawberries in the sauce and arrange them on a plate. Serve them to someone you want to make happy.

Caldo Verde

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It is officially spring in New York, but it certainly doesn’t feel like it. It feels schizophrenic actually as beautiful sunny days alternate with dark gray ones filled with freezing rain and hail.

Yeesh.

This has led to a kind of odd assortment of things to eat at home as I vacillate between going out with friends for dinner (it’s so nice out!) and wanting to stay at home and burrow under the covers until the chill finally goes away.

While perusing the contents of my fridge and freezer yesterday to see what I could whip up for dinner from its random contents, I was super happy to find a pair of CSA chorizo hiding behind some frozen loaves of bread to go along with a nice bunch of kale in the crisper.

I love the combination of kale and chorizo. There is something about the clean bitterness of the leaves that marries so beautifully with the spiciness and bite of the sausage. The flavors always make me think of sunnier places like Spain and Portugal. Places where I can eat standing upright in a bar, tossing cheap paper napkins on sawdust-covered floors willy-nilly.

This soup is good for this strange weather we have been having. It’s warming and comforting, but full of bright, big, assertive flavors. It gets even thicker and spicier overnight.

Ingredients:

1 large yellow onion, finely chopped

1 tablespoon of olive oil

3 yukon gold potatoes (about 1 pound), halved and cut crosswise into 1/8-inch thick slices

4 cups of chicken stock

1/2 pound of chorizo, cut into half-inch pieces

1 big bunch of lacinato or Tuscan kale, cut crosswise into 1/2-inch ribbons

Salt and pepper to taste

How to prepare:

1. Heat the tablespoon of oil over medium heat in a large, heavy-bottomed casserole. Sauté the chorizo in the hot oil until it is browned, about 5 minutes. Transfer the chorizo to paper towels to drain.

2. Pour off any excess oil in the pot, leaving about 2 teaspoons. Sauté the onion in the same pot over medium heat until the onion begins to become golden. Add the potato slices to the onions and toss them together. Continue to cook both for about 4 minutes more. Add the chicken stock and bring everything up to a simmer. Continue to cook the soup until the potatoes are very tender.

3. Using a potato masher, coarsely crush about half of the potatoes in the pot. Add the chorizo back to the pot and continue to simmer the soup for about 5 more minutes. Add the kale and continue to cook the soup for about 10 minutes more. Adjust the seasoning now, keeping in mind that the chorizo will probably add a fair bit of saltiness to the soup.

4. Let the soup stand about 10 minutes before serving. It will get even thicker and spicier overnight.

Milk and Honey Roasted Spare Ribs (St. Louis-Cut)

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Over the years, I have come across a fair number of recipes for pork cooked in milk.

Pork? Yes. In milk? Yes.

Very un-kosher.

I’m not exactly sure of where the technique finds its origins. Italy probably. The esteemed Elizabeth David cites the Veneto in particular, but I’ve also heard Bologna. Naples even.

In any case, if you don’t mind flouting several dietary laws at once, this is a pretty awesome way to ring in Spring and celebrate Biblical bounty in a truly transgressive way.

Yes, Friends, we are cooking cloven-hooved creatures in milk and honey!

A few weeks ago I got an amazing rack of ribs in my CSA share. Serendipitously, the NYT published a series of recipes about roasting ribs in the oven. Meant to be? A secular sign?

Yes!

Though the ribs take a good 2 hours or so to cook, the milk acids make the meat meltingly tender. The milk proteins and sugars create the most delectable crust. It’s like meat lollipops dipped in dulce de leche.

It’s not gross, it’s Italian.

Ingredients:

1 rack of St. Louis-cut spare ribs, or two racks of baby back ribs

2 tablespoons of olive oil, plus 2 tablespoons

2 tablespoons of fresh rosemary, chopped

3 cloves of garlic, finely minced

Salt and pepper to your liking (I like about about a teaspoon of salt and a good couple grinds of pepper)

1 yellow onion, peeled and halved

2 bay leaves

2 tablespoons of red wine vinegar

2 tablespoons of honey

2 cups of whole milk

1 cup of heavy cream

How to prepare:

1. If you haven’t done so yet, remove the membrane from the back of the rack of ribs. Flip the ribs bone-side up. Using the flat handle of a spoon or a butter knife, loosen the membrane from 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.

2. In a small bowl, mix together the oil, rosemary, 2 tablespoons of olive oil, salt and pepper with your fingers. Lay the ribs out on a large sheet of plastic wrap. Rub the mixture all over the ribs. Arrange the ribs on top of the onion halves. Lay the bay leaves on top, and sprinkle the ribs with the red wine vinegar. Wrap the ribs up tightly in plastic wrap and refrigerate them for between 6 to 12 hours.

3. Set the oven to 350°. Remove the ribs about 30 minutes to an hour before roasting.

4. Pour the remaining 2 tablespoons of olive oil into the bottom of a heavy-duty sheet pan. Heat the oil in the oven for about 5 minutes. Add the onion halves and the ribs — rounded side-up — in the pan and roast them for 30 minutes. Drizzle the ribs with the honey and roast them for about 10 minutes more. Then, turn the ribs over and pour the milk and cream over them. Roast the ribs for another hour.  After an hour, if you notice that the ribs are starting to brown too much, cover them with a sheet of parchment paper or aluminum foil. Continue to cook them for another 30 minutes to an hour more until they are tender enough for you to be able to pull the ribs apart with your fingers.

5. Remove the ribs from the oven and let them rest on a cutting board for about 5 to 10 minutes. Cut the ribs into sections and serve immediately.

Pan-Roasted Shitake Mushroom-Topped Bruschetta

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When guests come over for dinner, I usually like to give them something to nibble on while I am finishing up in the kitchen. Bruschetta is my preferred MO. First of all, bruschetta is always more impressive than a big bowl of olives — even very, very nice olives. Second of all, you can set up basically everything ahead of time, and assemble the toasts right before your guests breeze through the door.

Bruschetta is technically defined as any kind of grilled bread — brushed with olive oil and rubbed with garlic — with some kind of topping. In the flip-floppy way that we do things here, bruschetta has come to refer to the topping rather than the bread.

Ingredients:

One demi-baguette or small ciabatta loaf, cut into 1/2-inch slices

About one pound of shitake mushrooms, sliced

About 2 tablespoons of olive oil, plus one tablespoon

2 cloves of garlic, finely minced, plus one clove of garlic, smashed

2 tablespoons of fresh Italian parsley, finely chopped

The juice of one small lemon

Salt and pepper to taste

How to prepare:

1. In a large cast-iron pan, heat two tablespoons of olive oil over medium heat until the oil just begins to smoke. Add the mushrooms. Toss the mushrooms in the hot oil and spread them out evenly over the bottom of the pan. Cook them, stirring occasionally, for about 8 minutes. As the mushrooms cook, they will release a fair amount of water. Don’t worry, the water will evaporate as the mushrooms start to become golden.

2. When the mushrooms begin to brown, add the finely minced garlic to the pan. You want to make sure the garlic is evenly distributed throughout the mushrooms, but you don’t want it to burn. Cook the garlic and mushrooms together for about a minute.

3. Transfer the cooked mushrooms to a separate mixing bowl. Add the parsley and the lemon juice. Stir everything together to combine. Adjust the seasoning with salt and pepper to taste.

4. Brush the bread slices with the remaining tablespoon of olive oil and toast them until they are golden brown. Rub the slices with the smashed garlic clove before topping each one with a heaping spoonful of the mushroom mixture. Arrange the bruschetta on a plate and serve.

Vanilla Bean Crème Brûlée

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This was one of the first desserts that I learned to make in Paris. It’s quick, easy, elegant, and tastes better than anything you have ever tried in a restaurant.

The recipe will fill four 4.5 ounce ramekins.

Ingredients:

1 cup of whole milk

1 cup of heavy cream

1 whole vanilla bean

4 egg yolks

1/4 of white sugar

Enough butter to butter the ramekins

1/4 cup of light brown sugar

How to prepare:

1. Preheat your oven to 325°.

2. Split the vanilla bean lengthwise. Using a paring knife, scrape the vanilla beans from each half of the pod. Here is a good video to show you how if you haven’t done this before.

2. Heat the milk, the cream, the vanilla beans, and the vanilla pod halves over medium-low heat in a medium saucepan until the mixture just begins to boil. Turn off the heat and let the vanilla bean infuse the milk and cream mixture for anywhere between 10-30 minutes.

3. In a separate mixing bowl, whisk the egg yolks and the white sugar together until the mixture is pale and creamy, about 30 seconds. Remove the vanilla bean pod halves from the milk and cream mixture. Now you need to temper the egg yolks. This is important because if you add all the hot liquid to the egg yolks at the same time, you will be on you way to making scrambled eggs.

To temper, add a spoonful of the warm milk-cream mixture to the eggs. Stir quickly to incorporate the liquid into the egg and sugar mixture. Continue to add the liquid a little bit at a time, whisking everything until the mixture has become pale yellow and slightly foamy.

5. Carefully divide and pour the mixture into the buttered ramekins. Gently set the filled ramekins in a baking dish. Fill the dish with water until the water level comes halfway up the side of the ramekins. Bake the crèmes in the oven for about 45 minutes. The centers should be jiggly, but not watery.

6. Remove the crèmes from the oven and cool them on the countertop for about 10 minutes before chilling them the refrigerator for about 3 hours.

7. Before serving, heat your broiler element. Sprinkle the brown sugar evenly over the top of each crème. Broil the crèmes under the broiler until the brown sugar has become hard and crackly. Serve immediately.

Cavatappi with Pepperoni and Green Bell Pepper

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Hello Middle-America, how are ya’?

This recipe from Food and Wine was a good way to use up a pile of leftover pepperoni in the fridge. It was fast, it was easy, and it tasted almost exactly like a Supreme Pizza Hut pan pizza without the cheese. Whoo hoo!

Ingredients:

8 ounces of cavatappi

4 ounces of pepperoni, sliced in half

1 tablespoon of olive oil

1 medium onion, chopped

1 green bell pepper, chopped

2 cloves of garlic, minced

16 ounces of canned diced tomatoes

Salt and pepper

How to prepare:

1. Prepare the pasta according to directions. Make sure to reserve some of the pasta cooking water before draining the cavatappi.

2. While the pasta is boiling, heat the pepperoni slices in a large skillet over medium heat until they just begin to brown. Remove the slices from the skillet and transfer them to a paper towel-covered plate to drain. Wipe out the excess fat from the skillet with another paper towel.

3. In the same skillet, heat the tablespoon of olive oil over medium heat. When the oil is hot, add the onions and the green pepper. Sauté the vegetables until the onions are translucent and the peppers are beginning to soften. Add the minced garlic to the skillet and cook for about 30 seconds longer. Now add the diced tomatoes to the vegetables. Stir to combine everything before covering the pan with a lid. Lower the heat and simmer the sauce for about 10 minutes, adding some of the pasta water if the sauce looks like it needs it.

4. After the sauce has thickened, adjust the seasoning to your taste. Toss the pasta and the pepperoni with the sauce. Serve.