Category Archives: Recipes

Are These Zucchini Multiplying While I’m Not Watching?

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zucchiniI love zucchini. Really. But this is the time of year when zucchini seems less like a vegetable and more like a species of highly reproductive rodent. Every time I think I have a handle on our zucchini supply, the CSA bombs me with another shipment. Last week, a stranger physically dragged Jason into a church up the street so she could foist a bag of zucchini upon him.

And I know I’m not alone. I know this because when I was in Ohio recently, my mom, while feeding us zucchini bread for breakfast, suggested that perhaps we’d like some nice stuffed zucchini for lunch. Or maybe we had a little extra zucchini room in our suitcases? When I asked her what was up, she sighed and said, “I keep telling your father to pick them when they’re smaller.” Enter Farmer Dwight, right on cue, carrying a zucchini the size of a surface-to-air missile and grinning mischievously.

So I’m going to share one of my go-to zucchini recipes. It’s adapted from one I found years ago in one of the Moosewood cookbooks. (One of these days, I will pay proper homage to Mollie Katzen and all things Moosewood, but right now I have to keep an eye on my zucchini, lest they try to mate again.) It’s delicious, a little unusual and good for using up zucchini. Who could ask for more?

Zucchini Ankara Continue reading →

Pimp My Potluck: Spicy Southwestern Potato Salad

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southwestern potato salad

Also makes a great side dish for a night at home, with leftovers for the next day’s lunch.

One of the beautiful things about New York City in the summer is that the abundant sunshine drives people out of the tiny, winter hovels they call home and forces them to interact with the outside world. Hence, the plethora of outdoor concerts and events, to say nothing of the potluck, picnic and barbecue invitations that begin to pop up in one’s inbox.

But what exactly to contribute to these events can be a sticky problem. Beer is almost always welcome, but what if you need something edible in concert with the potable? Forget about baking whatever you took to those holiday parties months ago; turning the dial on the oven is a dangerous proposition that could result in instant HIC (Heat-Induced Coma). Salad is often a good idea, but no one like the sight of something brown and wilted giving up the ghost in the middle of the table. I think that’s how potato salad became a potluck staple, but I tire of both the mayonnaise-y and vinegary varieties pretty rapidly. Here’s a variation that has a refreshing citrus kick but is still hearty enough to carry you through the most taxing games of cornhole.

Spicy Southwestern Potato Salad

Dressing:

  • ¼ cup olive oil
  • Juice of one lime
  • 2 tablespoons of your favorite hot sauce
  • Salt and pepper to taste Continue reading →

Tamarind Time Machine

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tamarind tofu

I didn’t even have to squeeze anything out of a sock this time!

A lot of the time, my days in Cambodia feel very far away. Going through my old notebooks is like walking into a weird time portal, full of interviews with people I don’t remember (“Question: how long does it take you to paint a single tuk-tuk?”), odd to-do lists (“Find copy of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves for Savuth”) and discarded lyrics for a comedic folk song entitled “All My Linga Wants Is Your Yoni” (funnier than it sounds, I swear).

But with the publication of this cool anthology, which includes some of my Cambodian musings, I was looking for a way to pay homage to and feel reconnected with the Kingdom of Wonder. That’s when I went hunting through my notes for the recipe for Tofu with Tamarind, Chili and Basil. I scored it while writing a weekly column for The Phnom Penh Post called The Learning Curve in which I would try to learn traditional Khmer pursuits and then make fun of myself while I bumbled my way through them. Looking back, I see that I must have irritated a lot of busy people while researching this column, but they tended to be unfailingly good-natured about it, and Oeurm Pav at Arun Restaurant was no exception.

But would I be able to remember enough about interviewing her to recreate my favorite Khmer dish? It was a long time ago, my notes were sketchy, and even in optimal conditions, I’m lazy about measurements. However, I was able to purchase tamarind paste in an Indian grocery store in Queens, whereas in Cambodia, I had to boil the tamarind and squeeze it through one of Jason’s socks for lack of a cheesecloth. Perhaps giving undue weight to this head start, I decided that I could just intuit my way through the rest of it. Continue reading →

Anthropological Study of Brooklyn Male Making Banana Bread

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anthropology

“It’s true that I wasn’t paying attention to the recipe,” subject admits. “My plan was to just mix everything together.”

4:58 p.m. Subject announces desire to “whip up” some banana bread. Makes telephone call to sister-in-law, the source of excellent banana bread recipe, to discuss some possible alterations. Subject is heard to become very distracted, however, and start talking about horses instead.

6:10 p.m. Observer enters kitchen to see if it will soon be clear for dinner preparation. Banana bread still in early stages.
“Do we have a sifter?” subject asks, eyeing the brown sugar.
“I think you’re supposed to pack brown sugar,” observer offers.
“Ah, right,” subjects says, and then adds sugar to dry ingredients.
“Doesn’t sugar usually go with the wet ingredients?” observer asks innocently.
Subject becomes bashful and starts to pick out chunks of brown sugar with a fork. Mentions that maybe it won’t matter since he is substituting Greek yogurt for butter. Observer begins to have serious doubts about edibility of final product.

6:47 p.m. Subject becomes very dejected about de-sugaring process. Decides to wait until after observer has cooked dinner to finish banana bread endeavor. Subject then remembers the foraged black walnuts that have been in the refrigerator for months due to both the subject and the observer being too lazy to hull them. Subject retires to front stoop to smash them with rocks.

8:30 p.m. Observer tries to assess subject’s confidence level. Subject responds: “You know, I’m feeling more confident than ever. I feel like you are losing confidence, but mine is only growing. It may have been a rough start in some ways to some people, but I’m not worried.” Continue reading →

Kale and Crunchy Chickpea Salad

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One of my jobs provides the glorious perk of feeding me lunch on the regular.  And last week it served up a salad that included spiced, roasted chickpeas.  TKale and Crunchy Chickpea Saladhey were crunchy and spicy and seriously elevated what would otherwise have been a very regular salad.  So last night, I worked up my own version and created this salad.

Jay’s Kale & Crunchy Chickpea Salad

Ingredients:

  • 1 bunch of organic kale (Dark greens suck up a ton of poisons from contaminated ground. In fact, pretty much the only way to remove, for instance, heavy metals from the soil is to plant dark greens, pull them when they’re fully grown, and trash them. So don’t skimp on the greens; buy them organic or from a farmer whose growing methods you trust.) Continue reading →

The Winter Thaw, or Cocktail Class with Encyclopedia Brown

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Benjamin Zorn

Benjamin Zorn, preaching the good word at the BPL

Benjamin Zorn is a bartender at Tooker Alley in Prospect Heights and a cocktail-smith of the highest order. He also looks a little like Encyclopedia Brown, but that was appropriate to the context in which I first encountered him. Last week, Jason and I took one of the “culinary cocktails” series of classes at the Brooklyn Public Library for which Zorn was the master of ceremonies. Why the library decided to let a bunch of people come drink in their fancy new lab area, I’m not entirely sure, but it probably has to do with the library being awesome.

Similar to many enthusiasts of offbeat and intricate crafts, Zorn was almost visibly vibrating with fervor and brimming over with an abundance of helpful hints. These ranged from the obscure (explaining the dangers of ice chips in egg-white cocktails to a crowd of people who did not look as though they previously knew egg-white cocktails existed) to the obvious (“You can tell a bartender’s sense of humor from the way he names his drinks”*), from the practical (the difference between an $8 bottle of vodka and a $15 bottle of vodka is mostly sensed in the hangover) to the near-mystical (“Always pour with confidence!” my final note of the evening reads, which I must have written right before I chucked my notebook aside and started drinking the free samples.)

But perhaps the most useful concept (and the main theme of February’s class) was this: you can get a lot of mileage out of sticking to the elegant proportions of classic drinks but jazzing them up with infused liquors and syrups. Usually, I’m not wild about Old Fashioneds but when Zorn made one with star-anise simple syrup, Brooklyn-made bitters and an orange peel…hot diggedy!

Anyway, I didn’t want to rip off Zorn’s recipes, so I decided to use what he taught us and come up with my own take on a Tom Collins. I call it the Winter Thaw, and I’ll post the recipe below so you can rev yourself up before attending Zorn’s next library class in March.

The Winter Thaw Continue reading →

Off-the-Hook Mayonnaise for the Stubborn or Scientifically Curious

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asparagus with aioliI knew that something was amiss when I asked Roger if he made mayonnaise with a whisk or a mortar and pestle and he looked at me as if I had just asked if he preferred swallowing knives or molten lava. “Are you serious? Use a blender,” he said. And I should have trusted him, since he is a food guru, a homemade mayonnaise enthusiast and, though we have never arm-wrestled to prove it, probably somewhat better endowed with arm strength than I am. But I was supposed to be doing it by hand to better study the emulsifying process for my MOOC, and I had been bolstered by misleading videos of famous chef Nandu Jubany whipping some up in five minutes flat, so I cheerfully embarked on the most brutally work-intensive quarter cup of mayonnaise ever created.

mayonnaise

This is a horrible photo, but my wrist was too tired from stirring to hold the camera.

Aside from carpal tunnel syndrome being one of the main ingredients, homemade mayonnaise really is easy. It consists entirely of things that are likely in your kitchen already, namely an egg yolk, some olive oil, a clove or two of garlic (if you like saying the word aioli) and some salt and pepper. And, no joke, it tastes much better than what comes in a jar from the store. When I let Jason taste it, he called it “off the hook,” which is one of the highest compliments that can be bestowed upon a condiment. It was a little salty on its own for my taste (Jason loves salt so much that I think he is part ocean fish), but on an open-faced sandwich with some lemon tofu and lightly sautéed asparagus, it really was delicious. Jason kept making soft moaning sounds throughout the meal, presumably to express pleasure and encourage future mayonnaise making on my part. But I think this is really the kind of culinary experiment that he needs to experience for himself.

And here’s how you can experience it. Continue reading →

Cornbread with a Side of Stalinist Hijinks

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von bremzenLast fall at the Brooklyn Book Festival, I wandered over to one of the stages where a panel of food writers were holding court and became instantly charmed by a woman with audacious glasses, voluminous scarves and a loud Russian-accented voice. She was just the blend of frank and weird that I like in my authors, so I resolved to read her newest book, Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking: A Memoir of Food and Longing.

I’m so glad I did. Anya von Bremzen’s bizarre mash-up of cookbook, family history and anthropological study of Homo Sovieticus is one of the oddest but most enjoyable food volumes I’ve ever laid hands on. There is surprisingly little talk of borscht, but instead you’ll learn about Russian meat patties while also finding out how Stalin kept himself amused at his summer house meals. (It involved leaving tomatoes on chairs and exhorting high Politburo officials to put “dick” signs on Khruschev’s back. That wacky, mass-murdering prankster!) And the book is beautifully written, so much so that I laughed out loud when she described how her ex-boyfriend humbly offered himself up to co-author her first book and correct her “wonky English.”

cornbreadThe USSR seemingly having been full of voracious meat-eaters whenever supplies allowed, there aren’t a lot of recipes here for a vegetarian to attempt, but von Bremzen did provide a recipe for cornbread that I was eager to try. She actually included it as something of a joke, representative of Khrushchev’s certainty that corn was going to solve all of the USSR’s food shortage problems. Instead, he managed only to baffle and disgust millions of Russians who held firmly to the belief that bread could be made only with wheat. For this, he earned the title Corn Man, which I gather sounds like a worse insult in Russian than in English.

Anyway, the USSR was a massive place, and some of the people there did, in fact, eat corn, like in Moldova, whence the author drew the cornbread recipe. I was attracted to it mostly because it calls for as much feta cheese as it does cornmeal, with some butter and sour cream to boot. Continue reading →

What Was On Hand No. 982: Sweet and Shredded Mexican Sausage

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Grocery shopping in NYC can be a mixed bag.  On one hand, I’ve got a 24-7 Korean grocer two blocks away who has lots of produce (even if it is of anonymous origin) and high-end staples (even if they are kind of expensive).  On the other hand, I can’t get in a car and drive to Trader Joe’s or Wholefoods, instead having to do my best to squeeze into the average day sizable blocks of time to get to stores that aren’t really convenient.  The result, particularly as the work hours and the number of jobs increase, is too often an 8:00 p.m. choice between a motley mix of past-their-prime leftovers and takeout.

So  I’ve decided to focus, whenever possible, on whipping together dinners from assorted odds and ends in the fridge: the quarter gourd of a butternut squash, the apple that by tomorrow will be too soft, the spicy pickles hiding in a tub in the back corner.

The other evening, I came up with the following.

Jay’s Sweet and Shredded Mexican Sausage

Ingredients:

  • 1 small sweet potato (sitting on the counter for a week and a half)
  • 7 ounces of real or fake sausage (half a package left over from brunch a few days prior)
  • half a package of frozen broccoli florets (living in the freezer for however long)
  • two handfuls of salad greens (bought on sale around the corner)
  • cheddar cheese (a staple, duh) Continue reading →

Ice Sculptures and Newborn Cheese: More MOOCing Adventures

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fruits of my labor

Fresh ricotta with dill

One day, while I was procrastinating from doing homework for my online Science and Cooking class and a million other tasks by poking around on Arts & Letters Daily, I came across this article from the London Review of Books. Apparently, I am not the only person who was lured into taking a Harvard science class by the insertion of “cooking” into the title. Just remember, readers, where you heard it first.

rocaWhen I did finally stop surfing the web and started doing my online coursework, I noted dismally that I am falling pretty far behind. I have waded through material on phase changes, but I still confuse elasticity and plasticity, and who knows when I’ll finally get around to spherification. I think the main problem is that I get weirdly hypnotized by certain videos and have to stop working to let them sink into my brain. For instance, who would have guessed that very, very pure water doesn’t freeze easily, even in a refrigerator that is kept below the freezing point, because there are no microscopic bits of muck for the ice crystals to glom onto? It’s called supercooling (no, I am not making that word up), and it allows for wacky poured ice sculptures to be created at the table by fancy chefs like Jordi Roca. (Note: the instant formation of it is more magical and less phallic than this still image would have you believe.) Seriously, don’t you feel like you need a few minutes to digest that image before you memorize some formulas? I did.

ricottaAnother problem is that I’m lagging behind on my labs. The use of my disorderly, cluttered kitchen as a laboratory makes me nervous and leaves me with little hope of precision. But when I can rouse myself to action, they usually prove interesting. By far the best lab so far has been making ricotta cheese from a quart of milk and a little white vinegar. I’m actually not sure what I was supposed to learn about phase changes from this, but I made cheese, guys! From scratch. Continue reading →