Roasted Tomato Shrimp Cocktail
A couple blurry pictures and hazy memories of satisfied taste buds are the only things that remain from the bachelorette party version of this recipe. With half a dozen sous chefs (read: unsuspecting party guests) whirring around the kitchen, dicing and chopping and chatting about chiffon (hey, it was a bachelorette party after all), there wasn’t time or space for the executive chef to double as photographer.
Of course, another reason there’s a big gap in our archival of food images for the day could be the emergency quest to find The Last Avocado in the City. When our only non-guacamole’d avocado proved unripe, I stopped mid-cooking, grabbed a sous chef and searched every bodega in a 5 block radius. I’m sure the recipe would have been fine without the creamy avocado bits to contrast the salty shrimp, but why live in a world without avocado in your cocktail? So thank you to the Dwight Bodega for giving us your very last avocado. You may have restored my faith in the east coast. Read more…
Portabello Pizza Bites
While things are starting to change now, for weeks – nay months – flipping on the computer each morning was a painful reminder of Connecticut’s delayed progression out of a dreadful winter. It was agony reading about people in warmer climates starting to experience the bounty of spring, when the ice layer over home hadn’t yet thawed. I remember someone mentioned fresh strawberries early on and I couldn’t get Aran’s stunning pictures of the cutest, ripest baby tomatoes out of my mind as I sifted through baskets and baskets of kale at the market. I don’t know about you, but when I march out in 19 degree wind chill, I expect to be rewarded with something far, far more exciting than yet another bushel of kale.
So instead of treating myself to local berries, I baked bread. And then I realized we hadn’t had bread on the site since my last minute Thanksgiving crisis last fall. And yea, that needed to be fixed. Bread is kind of a big deal. And an even a bigger deal if it’s in bite-size form. But every time I sat down to write about my newest bite-sized delight, I would stand right back up and make another batch. I’m only resisting the urge now because I’m a ten minute walk away from the comfort of my kitchen and that familiar feeling of dusting my hands in flour. Read more…
Black bean and goat cheese tamales (bachelorette part I)
If it seems like Amanda and I haven’t been cooking too much together lately, it’s because – quell surprise – we haven’t been cooking too much together lately. In fact, in the most recent weeks we haven’t had any time together at all – cooking or not. Amanda’s finally made her inevitable move away from Connecticut and left me alone with our shared memories, mutual friends and some frozen tamales.
Luckily the tamales are delicious (and the friends aren’t bad either), so I can forgive her for having the audacity to follow her job, fiance and good sense out of our quaint little town. Maybe it’s wrong that I’m essentially calling a steamed black bean, cheese and masa harina mix a suitable facsimile for one of my closest friends, but they’re sooo good. Read more…
This is such an easy recipe, and I’ve made it a bunch of times and it never gets old. It goes perfectly with homemade pita chips, which we can talk about another time, but it’s also great with store-bought pita chips, crackers, chips, whatever you can get your hands on.
Emily and I first tried this recipe on what I think was our first Smitten Kitchen night, and some of the photos I’m including come from that night. So it’s also historic.
The one real change I’ve made to the Smitten Kitchen recipe is to roast my own red peppers. It’s not very hard, and in fact I picked up the method from another Smitten Kitchen recipe (her summer pea and roasted red pepper pasta salad – which I made for my brother’s Boy Scout troop, and they liked it, or at least ate it). Frankly, I’m a law student and not rolling in dough, so I just never have the heart to buy the roasted red peppers in the jar, because at least at my grocery store, it’s always more expensive than fresh red peppers. But know that you can also use the jarred stuff, and I’m sure it would be delicious.
make-ahead lightly-carmelized-onion alfredo sauce
Last night, I planned to make a creamy mushroom pasta sauce. But I pulled my mushrooms out, and they’d taken on a distinct aroma – a sure sign they’d already gone bad, even though the aroma wasn’t too offensive.
I thought about just making regular old alfredo, but I thought – you know, I want more flavor than that. Something a little fun and exciting for my tastebuds while I’m suffering through finals.
So I diced an onion and started to sautee it. Impulsively, I threw some sugar on it and let the onions carmelize a bit before adding garlic and then the cream and cheese. My impulse was a good one. This stuff is delicious and is comforting me as I pore over administrative law rulings and try to cope with spring allergies.
I don’t have a whole box of any one pasta right now, though, so I didn’t want to make a whole batch of pasta with mismatched pasta shells. Instead, I made a “make-ahead” version of the sauce and for each serving of pasta, I’ve been heating up a bit of the sauce, adding some milk, and throwing in the pasta. It’s working pretty well.
perfect brown rice (no, really, I mean it)
This recipe is pretty simple, and it doesn’t have any pictures. Why? Because I’m in the middle of finals and forgot to take a picture today before transferring the leftover rice to tupperware. I thought I had pictures from the last time I made this rice, but I was wrong.
However, after my second resounding success trying this method of cooking brown rice, I couldn’t keep quiet about it any longer. Especially since, with my finals schedule, the chances of me making even rice again any time soon are pretty minimal.
I love brown rice. It’s delicious, and it tastes healthy – it has that ever-so-slightly chewy, very grain-y texture that tells you “Hey, this was a good choice. This completely makes up for the jelly beans you just ate.” But it’s hard to make. In the past, when I’ve followed the standard method for cooking brown rice, it’s always come out a little soggy, or a little undercooked, or it all sticks together no matter what I do. I could never get it perfect. Until I tried this.
ratatouille – vegetables that even picky boys like
The beloved carnivore loves ratatouille – he loves it so much that he got a mandoline for me after I told him pointedly (several times) that it would make it much easier for me to make ratatouille for him. The fact that he loves ratatouille so much thrills me – because it’s pretty healthy, especially if you serve it over a bed of rice or some other healthy grain.
When he was in town this weekend for Easter, he was getting over a sinus infection. It was rainy and disgusting outside, so I wouldn’t let him come with me to the grocery store, even though he wanted to. It was selfish – I didn’t want him to get more sick, and therefore be too tired to do the Easter egg hunt I made for him in my living room. You might think you can’t find a lot of places to hide Easter eggs in a living room, but trust me, you can.
When I was at the grocery store, I saw a small Japanese eggplant, which is perfect for ratatouille because its circumference is much smaller and more similar to that of yellow squash, zucchini, and red pepper. So I decided to be a nice, generous fiancée, and surprise the beloved carnivore with ratatouille for dinner. (She’s generous, so generous . . . )
The other day, when I had a serious case of writer’s block, I realized I needed some culinary therapy. So I pulled out my favorite pudding recipe.
This pudding is one of the first things I learned how to cook. I know I was, at the oldest, 14 when I first made chocolate pudding using the recipe my mom’s old Better Homes and Gardens cookbook. It was delicious, despite my culinary ineptitude. And I made it several times in high school, always proud that I’d pulled off such a “complicated” recipe (it’s not actually very complicated).
My dad got me a Better Homes and Gardens cookbook of my own sometime during my teenage years, but there was one problem: it was new. The chocolate pudding recipe had changed and suddenly called for cocoa powder instead of unsweetened chocolate. Unacceptable.
So in college I found myself calling my mom to see if she could find that old chocolate pudding recipe in her cookbook, but she’d since either switched a newer version of the cookbook or gotten rid of the cookbook. I found a substitution formula online and proceeded, but I had my heart set on finding that old recipe, because I was pretty sure there was still something different (I’m not at all sure if that’s true).
Enter, antique stores. My mom and I were antique shopping a year or so later when I came across an old Better Homes and Gardens cookbook. It was in pretty horrible condition, but it was old enough to have the original chocolate pudding recipe that called for unsweetened chocolate instead of cocoa. And of course, I went home with it. That, and a John F. Kennedy for President pin. I’m pretty sure my mom paid for all of that, so thanks again, Mom!
Penguin Cookies
Ok, we’ve been out of touch for a while, I’ll admit that. We’re heartily sorry, etc., etc. I’ve been exhausted and crazy busy but other than that have had zero excuse not to at least post this recipe. Emily, however, has been both crazy buzy with work and spearheading what I can now officially refer to as the Best Bachelorette Party Ever. The menu Emily planned for my bachelorette party this past weekend would make Julia Child blush. And our friend Sarah planned awesome decorations and a couple of tasteful yet hilarious games. And I still haven’t taken down some of the decorations . . . And I’m still finding little feathers from the feather boa in random places. And I’m still drinking out of my bride cup, although now I’ve switched to water.
I’m also still crazy busy and exhausted, but at the moment I’m just slightly too exhausted to write another page of my monstrous paper, so here I am, telling you guys about these adorable penguin cookies we made weeks ago.
These penguin cookies are pretty adorable, and I wanted us to make them because I was about to visit the beloved carnivore, who is also the beloved one-who-is-obsessed-with-penguins. Last year, I painted him some penguins:
This year, I just gave him some of the cookies Emily and I made. I think he was just as happy, although he can’t hang a cookie on his wall and wake up looking at it every morning – at least not sanitarily.
There was another reason I wanted to make penguin cookies and share the recipe with you guys. A friend of mine is participating in the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Run for the Wild later this month. This year, the funds from that event are going to be dedicated to adorable penguins (and all penguins are adorable). So, if you think live penguins are just as cute if not cuter than these penguin cookies, or if you just generally care about preventing bad things from happening to animals regardless of their level of adorableness, consider donating by clicking here.
Anyway, while I’m writing up this recipe because of my general affinity for penguins, Emily’s the real hero of this recipe. Without Emily, the whole process would have ended very early. There was a point in the process where I was reading the recipe directions from another site and just making a pouty face like a two year old. Luckily I added an, “Emily! Help!” and she saved the day and figured out a better way to do it.
Happy Belated! (chocolate-dipped fortune cookies)
I’m horrible at giving presents on time. Just absolutely horrible. I always remember the date and squeeze a phone call in, but I still owe my dad a Christmas gift and probably owe brothers gifts going years back. We all have our faults.
Luckily, my mom understood this year when these treats showed up on her doorstep two weeks late. Of course she did, because like any good mom, she always loves us kids despite our faults and mistakes. Not that I have any faults other than this one. No, my tiny, illegible handwriting certainly didn’t lead to a horribly bungled 8th grade Lewis & Clark journal that my mom helped me fix page by page into the wee hours of the morning. I’m positive I never whined, cried, bargained or manipulated to try to get out of a piano lesson or seven. And I certainly never left for school without my P.E. clothes or oboe or lunch or music folder or homework (or grad school ID card…). And if I did, I was responsible enough not to beg my mom to rush deliver said item by car or priority mail.
But just in case I did do those things, I thought Mom might deserve a personalized gift expressing how much I appreciate everything she’s done for me year after year. These chocolate-covered fortune cookies were perfect. Read more…
emandam 