Author Archives: Jason

What Was On Hand #391: Smoked Winter Dinner

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IMG_1783I’m a huge fan of simplicity.  But it does not come easily to me.

And then sometimes circumstance forces my hand.

With no time to go grocery shopping and a bunch of root vegetables hanging about one night last week, I ended up simply chopping up the veggies; sprinkling them with olive oil, smoked salt, and black pepper; and roasting them.

That’s it.

And they were delicious I was kind of floored.

I don’t us smoked salt a lot, or hadn’t up until then, which makes me feel like a fool because although it’s not as great as, say, the album version of “Let It Be” is great, it’s pretty goddamn great all the same.  The carrots, beets, squash, and potatoes seem to gain a richness of their own flavor that, oddly, isn’t particularly smoky.  The end result, paired with some polenta (the only grain on hand) sprinkled with cheddar cheese, was surprisingly enough not only sufficiently filling but also sufficiently satisfying for dinner.  I Continue reading →

Quick ‘n Clean Ricotta Salata & Arugula Sandwich

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Quick n Clean Ricotta Salata SandwichWho knows ricotta salata?  If not, you probably know ricotta.  It’s the spreadable white Italian cheese stuffed in pasta shells and ravioli and, when mixed with sugar, cannoli shells.  It’s mild enough to be put to a variety of uses.

Ricotta salata is its overworked, salty cousin who’s been around the block.  Ricotta is put under pressure, salted, and dried, and the result is an inexpensive, semi-hard cheese a bit firmer than feta and with a pleasant saltiness and maybe a hint of tang.  I think it’s great for snacking, but it’s also a fantastic ingredient in any kind of simple, clean-tasting dinner.  And thus the resulting recipe, a suuuuuper easy and uncluttered sandwich in which each ingredient stands out and is given room to breathe and be enjoyed on its own.

Quick ‘n Clean Ricotta Salata & Arugula Sandwich

  • Quality, crusty bread (this is key; weak-ass stuff from the Wonderbread aisle will sink anything)
  • Arugula
  • Capers
  • 1/4 of one lemon
  • ricotta salata
  • olive oil Continue reading →

Quick-n-Easy-Sticky-Sweety-Monkey-Bread Breakfast Huzzah!

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IMG_1725Do you know monkey bread?

You need to know monkey bread.

Monkey bread is a Southern staple, super easy to make, and stupid delicious.  We used to have it on the regular after church on Sundays, but I rarely make it as an adult.  Perhaps because of this scarcity of monkey bread in my life, I’ve come to think of it as significantly a Christmas thing, an integral part of breakfast, served alongside some kind of spiced juice-tea concoction my mother has served in mugs shaped like Santa and Mrs. Claus’ heads, and after which consuming I will fall asleep on the floor under the tree in a bathrobe or perhaps sweats and a 26-year-old Def Leppard shirt as soft as The Baby Jesus’ fanny.

After making it at home this year for a solo Shannon-&-Jason Christmas, though, I think I’ll be making it on the regular again.  Perhaps Mom always brought it out on Christmas because it’s so damn easy.

And because it’s so sticky sweet gooey yummy blam!

To make monkey bread all you need is Continue reading →

Homemade Limoncello: Stupid Easy, Deceptively Impressive

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Last February, ShannIMG_1540on and I walked to the main branch of the Brooklyn Public Library to learn about the history of cocktails and, of course, drink a variety of them for free in the classy environs of the material evidence of Humanity’s learning.  The teacher was this dude Benjamin Zorn from Tooker Alley, and his lessons included a few free recipes.  So I took him up on the challenge and decided to make for the holidays and as a gift for my cousin Mitch’s engagement a batch of limoncello.

And, man, was it easy.  I’ve never brewed my own beer nor made rotgut in the tub, but I feel pretty confident that making limoncello is one of the easiest ways you can sex up the booze in your life.  And I’m pretty sure it’s one of the easiest ways to, say, make a unique gift to present to someone and garner ooo’s and ahh’s.  You’ll then inevitably get to drink some of that present, too.  Score.  It’s great for after dinner, sweet and tart and thick. Continue reading →

Jalapeño-Rosemary Lemon Chard Baked Potatoes

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IMG_1533Baked potatoes are the bomb.  Rub the potatoes down with oil, sprinkle with sea salt, and stick ‘em in the over, and I am happy.  And that’s why, at a job where food not eaten by students is inexplicably dumped in the trash, I advised the chef to give the leftovers to me, rather than the garbage.  And so I ended up with a huge Ziploc freezer back full of baked potatoes.

Which was fine because I had too much work to do last night to try to figure out some way to make that CSA squash palatable to Shannon, who ranks squash somewhere along the lines of gruel.  Still, we had a bunch of new CSA greens, too.  What to do?

Jalapeño-Rosemary Lemon Chard Baked Potatoes, that’s what to do.  Shannon was skeptical of the flavor profile, but part of my job is to propose ideas and suggestions Shannon is skeptical of and then overcome the odds.  It took about forty-five minutes to make (mostly due to washing and chopping everything), a time frame that would probably have been shorter if I wasn’t listening to All Things Considered and just kind of unwinding, and the end result was a brightly flavorful and filling dinner with a little bit of heat and a fresh, slightly crunchy aspect to the expected earthiness of the potato.  It was kind of a nice new take on the stolid tuber.

Jalapeño-Rosemary Lemon Chard Baked Potatoes

  • 1 large green jalapeño, finely chopped, with 7 or 8 of the seeds retained
  • 5 sprigs rosemary, leaves finely chopped
  • 1 bunch of Swiss chard, leaved separated from stalk and roughly chopped and stalk cut into ¼ pieces Continue reading →

It’s All About the Dressings: Quick and Dirty Quinoa Tabbouleh

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IMG_1415Quinoa is hip.  My supermarket, which is far from a healthfood store or anything particularly familiar to, say, a suburban shopper, now has at least four brands of it, all organic.  Hidden away is a Goya version for a third of the cost.

I’ve taken to making like a cup of the stuff at some point in the week (add a bouillon cube to the water to offset that metallic’y taste it sometimes gets) and using it as a salad or taco ingredient.  It should keep for the better part of the week in an air-tight container in the fridge.   The other night, used it to make a badass tabbouleh variant that took about fifteen minutes to prepare and was super filling.

  • Chop one bunch of parsley, including the more supple portions of some of the stems.
  • Mix it in a bowl with half-a-cup of the quinoa.
  • Add two teaspoons of capers.
  • Make a dressing of the juice from 2 lemons, olive oil to taste, a tablespoon of the caper brine, a shake of garlic powder, some fresh ground pepper, and a dash of chili powder.
  • Mix and eat

Paired with a slice of quality bread and some slices of tomato and cheese, this made an awesome meal that didn’t take, as is so often the case with me, half an evening to prepare.

What Was On Hand No. 136: Slaw Dressing On the Shoulders of Mission Chinese

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Pretty, but kinda wonky.

Pretty, but kinda wonky.

As part of my buddy Tancil’s birthday evening a while back, I ended up in Cobble Hill at Mission Chinese Food.  Mission Chinese used to live in the East Village, makes pretty much the best Chinese food I’ve ever had if you consider Chinese a cuisine that uses Chinese food as a launch pad into Chinese’ish awesomeness, and recently took up residence in Brooklyn after some kind of kerfuffle with rent in Manhattan.  These factors apparently combined to make The Times take notice and dedicate the “Eat” section of the Sunday Magazine to the place, something I don’t think I’ve ever seen before in my twelve or so years of subscribing to the Sunday Times.

So I went ahead and riffed on their recipe for Cabbage Salad with Sesame-Anchovy Dressing, which was okay except for the fact that I ended up ignoring the recipe’s measurements because I don’t know why and also substituting green-olive hummus or something like that for tahini because that’s what I had on-hand.  The results were pretty but mixed.

The next night, the fridge still full of unused cabbage and other CSA veggies looking for a fate, I combined the remaining “traditional” and red cabbages, spring onion greens, peeler- Continue reading →

Summer Garden Kasha Salad & Blackened String Beans Whatever-Style

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IMG_1375The garden is kicking it thanks to the soaker hose-timer one-two, and we ended up with a bunch of monster-mature string beans.  The things double in heft overnight.  So, what to do?  These guys weren’t up to a gentle steaming.

Blacken.

And pair them with all the tomatoes bulking up in the garden, too.

First, the ‘maters, starring in an ensemble cast in Summer Garden Kasha Salad.

Combine in a big bowl:

Purty

Purty

  • One cup cold kasha (Kasha is buckwheat; barley would work as well.  Cook it with apat of butter in the pot, then chill in the fridge.)
  • One cucumber cut into small chunks
  • One bunch of parsley, chopped, with heaviest stems removed (We used broad leaf and, uhh, traditional? parsley.  I completely forgot that the former existed until the CSA dropped a potter version on us.)
  • One sweet red pepper, diced
  • Two monster or four medium tomatoes, chopped (We had Black Krim and Woodle Orange varieties.)
  • As much feta cheese as you can get your hands on (Bulgarian Sheep Feta is the Holy Grail.)

For the dressing, squeeze, shake, grind, etc into the bowl: Continue reading →

Quick Dinner Sandwiches: Torta Riffage and Beauteous Red Onions

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This is onion overkill. I had to remove probably two-thirds of these to get the taste proportions correct.

This is onion overkill. I had to remove probably two-thirds of these to get the taste proportions correct.

I love immigrants.  I’m convinced that if anything is to save the U.S. from its tech-tweaked obliviousness and proudly-uninformed politics, it will be immigrants coming here to kick ass and remind the rest of us how it is done.  There are two primary personal experiences that actualize this feeling of love.  The first is the rare experience of taking a cab (always driven by an immigrant) and leaving soothed by the reminder that people all over the world still see this as the place to come and work your ass of in relative peace and safety.  The second is the torta.

The torta is the ultimate combination of Mexican gastronomic glory and that ultimate form in American dining: the sandwich.  Its bread is white-bread hero rolls, and I don’t even care.  We eat beans a lot in our house because 1) they’re super tasty, 2) they’re super inexpensive, and 3) they’re super inexpensive, and after paging through cookbooks looking for something out of the ordinary to make for dinner and getting distracted by a recipe for marinating onions, I decided to riff on the torta motif with those onions as the primary ingredient. Continue reading →