Category Archives: Food

The recipe I used for this chicken coconut dish is actually intended to be a soup, but I spooned it instead over a bed of steamed rice and it worked out just as well. It’s a joy to have fresh lemongrass from the backyard for Thai food, but the season is quickly coming to its close. I harvested most of the stems from the three large clumps I planted this year, freezing them in small batches and Ziploc freezer bags in the hopes of having them through the winter.

The lemongrass and ginger were to be cut roughly, then mashed with the back of a cleaver. Being that I’m not allowed to have a cleaver in the house, I used a meat tenderizer instead. Same end result. The coconut milk, fish sauce and a pair of red chili peppers form the basis of many Thai recipes. The chicken stock (which we didn’t have on hand) makes it soupy and rich (I substituted a vegetable stock because no one was going out to the market in the rain) and the strips of chicken turn more tender the longer you can simmer them. I didn’t have the patience for that, so when the rice was ready I spooned the soup over it and went to Thai-town.

There’s something about a reduction that is pure magic. When citrus is a part of it, it’s even better. In this instance, a citrus and soy sauce combination gets reduced to a thick and delicious topping for a sea bass that turned out simply super. Served with a broccoli and spinach stir fry (in a hoisin sauce) and some lime herbed rice (made with whatever was left in the garden – parsley, grapefruit mint, a bit of basil, some cilantro, and the juice of one lime) – this was so good that I must share the recipe with you. It was online, so I don’t know its origin, but whoever came up with it has my hearty praise.

By the way, I wasn’t sure how well I’d like steamed fish, having grown accustomed to the dense flavor and texture of having it grilled so often this summer, but it turned out better than anticipated, thanks in large part to the reduction. I also liked how (obviously) moist it remained. This one is definitely worth a try.

One of the redeeming qualities of fall is the return to cozy kitchen cooking. In the summer, I ask Andy to do most of our dinners on the grill (and with our impending kitchen renovation I’m hoping the grill will take us into the winter…) but now that the weather is turning, I welcome the heat of the oven as the darkness comes down earlier. This is also the season of the harvest, of the squash and root vegetables, and their earthy, nutty goodness. One of my favorites is butternut squash, and one of the more delectable pairings is that with sage – which has been a mainstay in the herb garden, but goes relatively under-utilized until the fall.

Aside from the grill, it’s the fresh herbs from the garden that I will miss most once the crippling frosts begin to hit. Parsley (flat and curly), tarragon, chives, sage, dill, and basil – it’s been a banner year for the herb garden, and they made such a difference that I’m dreading the long season without them.

Prior to this recipe, I’ve only roasted butternut squash, or cooked it down to oblivion in the service of a pureed soup. Here, it remains largely intact, yet cooked through, in a vegetable or chicken stock, flavored with an onion and some nutmeg, and a liberal sprinkling of salt and pepper.

The recommended pasta was a tagliatelle, but a fettuccine made an adequate substitute – the key to the whole endeavor was the fresh sage. A little bit, chopped up as seen here, goes a long way, so use sparingly. You can also, as recommended in the original recipe, fry up a few whole sage leaves in some olive oil. They go quickly, so watch closely because it only takes a few seconds once the oil gets hot. Dry them on a paper towel then use them to garnish the top of the pasta, along with some freshly grated Parmesan cheese.

It’s a perfect meal for the fall, using the best of the season – butternut squash and sage – and blending them in a straightforward but rich classic combination.

The best way to prepare fresh vegetables in season is to keep things simple, letting their original flavor and texture take pride and prominence, as in this side dish of zucchini. The preparation was easy and quick: sauté a small, sliced yellow onion in some good olive oil until soft, then add sliced zucchini until it reaches the level of doneness you like. Season with salt and freshly ground pepper, then top with some freshly grated Parmesan cheese. (Or leave out if you’re lactose intolerant.)

In an effort to eat slightly healthier, I’ve been trying to incorporate at least one green item – usually salad or side dish – into dinner meals. It makes it easier to forego a second helping of pasta or rice.

The term “foodporn” is tossed around far too often, hashtagged to death (yes, I’m guilty) and more ubiquitous than the cock shots on my Twitter feed. (Go easy on the Retweeting, peeps.) But in certain circumstances, and for certain meals, the whole foodgasm/foodporn moniker works. Case in point was this sinfully-good sea bass wrapped in prosciutto. I tend to avoid baking fish in any way, because it too easily dries out, but when wrapped in something like prosciutto, you’re safe to bake away. In this recipe from Ina Garten, the sea bass is brushed with olive oil, salt, and pepper (you can go easy on the salt though, given the encasement) then wrapped in ribbons of prosciutto. Baked at 400 degrees for about ten to fifteen minutes, the prosciutto is nicely firm, while the fish remains moist and perfectly done.

The real kicker though, is what goes on top. Boil a stick of butter on medium heat with six sprigs of fresh rosemary for about ten minutes (perfect timing for the baking). Remove the rosemary sprigs, turn off the heat, then add about 3 tablespoons of fresh lemon juice and stir well. Spoon this over the fish and prosciutto just before serving, then top with a sprig of rosemary for garnish. It sounds like a step that can be omitted, but you’d be missing out on the best part of the whole affair. That’s what turns it from simple culinary procreation into a gastro-orgasmic delight.

The Contessa serves this with a collection of roasted autumn vegetables, but since it hasn’t been that cold of late I made a simple batch of spaghetti squash with garlic, salt, and pepper.

The Barefoot Contessa turned me onto this snack, which she claims is big as an after-school treat in France. I’m less a fan of the radishes, and use them more as a salty accent to the baguette and butter, which to me is the whole point of this exercise. I tried the no-carb thing for a while and it’s just not for me – low-carb perhaps, but any time something is so stringent as to eradicate bread and pasta, well, it’s not going to stick.

This was my virgin couscous attempt, and I’m not quite sold. I think they cooked a tad too long, with a tad too much liquid. In fact, they were moist enough before adding the ¼ cup of lemon juice the recipe called for, but after a bit they soaked it all up. The Israeli couscous used here is a bit larger than the usual couscous. I used a recipe found online that called for fresh parsley, fresh rosemary, and fresh tarragon – only the rosemary was lacking from the garden, but the tarragon I had planted was so feeble I asked Andy to pick up a bunch of that too. Both the rosemary and tarragon are powerful additions, so use sparingly (I like a lot of flavor, but I might cut back on each in the future.) Along with chicken broth, some scallions, and salt and pepper, it made for a flavorful dish, perfectly complementary with the lemon rosemary chicken rotisserie that they had already cooked at The Fresh Market.

As for the couscous itself, I’m not head-over-heels in love just yet. Between this and the quinoa, I think I’d give the quinoa the edge. Of course, it may have been my over-cooking that ruined its chances, so I’ll try again in the future. The fact is, when it comes to supportive side dishes, I’ll always be a Filipino steamed rice queen at heart.

The two plates pictured here are the two dishes I made when my friend JoAnn visited early on in the summer. The season had just gotten underway, and everything was fresh and new. In honor of that, and to put this summer officially to bed, I made those dishes again. One is a simple plate of heirloom tomatoes, sprinkled with olive oil and white balsamic vinegar, then dusted with almond slivers and chives, and a liberal sprinkling of salt and freshly-ground pepper.

The other is a salad made of arugula and thinly-sliced fennel, dressed with a Dijon vinaigrette (that also utilized the magic ingredient – white balsamic vinegar). The original version had been topped with a grilled chicken breast for a more substantial meal, but on this day I wanted something lighter.

As much as I love the start of fall, I’m also hesitant to let this summer go. It was a good one, filled with friends and fun times, lovely stretches of heat and sun, and trips to New York and Boston. But this is the stuff of a more-detailed summer recap that will be coming up later. For now, enjoy the salad – one last time.

Last month I had an amazing pizza in the North End of Boston. It had a crispy, thin crust, a spattering of goat cheese, some figs, and a topping of fresh arugula. Not traditional by any means, but all the better for it. It haunted me, as much for its taste as for its simple rustic charm, and when I found a few similar recipes online I decided to try my hand at it.

Now, I’m not good with dough, especially pizza dough. It’s so… messy. And sticky. And it doesn’t ever do what you want it to do. I’m not one of those people who likes to “play” in the kitchen either. Aside from the occasional piece of pasta thrown at the wall (for what purpose again?) I don’t really mess around. So, rolling out the pizza dough was my least favorite part of this whole pizza-making process, and one I did rather poorly. I wanted thin crust, but this thing just puffed up like the stay-puffed marshmallow man. It wasn’t pretty – at least, it wasn’t quite what I was after. But that was the only part that didn’t work.

I assembled this version with goat cheese, some mozzarella (we had to use it up), figs, and arugula, but I added some bacon as well, and finished it off with something that, in my humble opinion, surpassed the original: a balsamic honey reduction that was both sweet and savory, and a veritable orgasmic explosion for the taste-buds.

There’s something about a wine or vinegar reduction that is magical. I don’t know the science of it, or why it works so well, but it’s sublime. And on a pizza like this, well, it’s beyond good. Obviously, it couldn’t quite recapture the exact alchemy of the North End original (that was truly a special event), but it came close, and brought me back to the freshness of a summer day, when a weekend in Boston was laid out before me, and I had nothing to do but soak it all up.

This dish was an eye-opener and educator for me. With it, I learned that curry is not a spice unto itself – it’s actually a combination of several spices – coriander, turmeric and cumin. I always thought curry was, well, curry. (Told you I was a novice in the kitchen.) I also learned how good tamarind and coconut milk tasted together – particularly when topped by fresh cilantro – and how easy and quick it was to cook a piece of white fish (in this case tilapia) in such a simmering sauce.

Baby steps, folks. One day we’ll look back on this and laugh, like one might at mistaking cilantro for parsley.

If you’ve seen ‘The Drowsy Chaperone’ you know that I did not make up the title of this post – some drunken diva did, which only makes me love it more. It works here, when one needs a spicier name than ‘Plum Crumble’ for the deliciousness you see before you. Since plums have been in season, I gave in and bought a bunch of the prune variety, and did the only sort of baking I do, which means a crumble. (I’ll never be a baker or a candle-stick maker.)

Next time, if there is a next time, I would opt for using the larger plums in this recipe, as the smaller prune plums were more work to prepare. A crumble is very forgiving though, hence its favored (only) status in my baking repertoire. I also loved how the rather yucky and non-descript color of the flesh and skin turned into this gorgeous vermillion shade during the baking process.

The recipe is from Martha Stewart, bless her heart (and I mean that in the Southernmost way) and it works quite well. For someone more versed in baking, I’m sure a crumble (or in Martha’s words an ‘oatmeal crisp’ – I’m probably wrong about the whole name, actually) is a joke. For me, it was a triumph. Give it a whirl.

It figures that as soon as I start to get the hang of this cooking thing, our kitchen is about to undergo a major renovation, meaning it will be out of commission for the next few months. Oh well, it was good while it lasted, and I can bask in the glow of this sort of photographic evidence that I didn’t do half-badly.

Here is a dinner made up of grilled yellowtail tuna, grilled zucchini and red peppers, and steamed rice with black sesame seeds. We’ve got some time before the kitchen work begins in earnest, so there will be a few more posts culled from our sad kitchen, but its time is coming to a close.

Andy may be the best at making an omelet, pancakes, French toast, and any number of breakfast foods (which he doesn’t usually eat), but I’m the one who knows how to poach eggs. And assemble them nicely on a toasted slice of whole wheat bread, a bed of avocados, and some arugula. Hence this simple but surprisingly fancy bit of breakfast.

I buttered the toast, and added some salt and pepper to the top, but mostly this dish relies on the freshness of the ingredients, and the golden runny egg yolk, for its flavor. My favorite part is the avocado – a few slices of nature’s butter make all the difference. (Avocado hints: rub the skin with lemon to stop it from turning brown, and if you want to save half of it for a later time, leave the inner pit intact and refrigerate.)

The prune plums are in season now, so I bought a box of them from the local farmer’s market. As a kid, I loved eating them plain, skin and all, with their sticky sweetness running over my fingers and down my chin. By some oddly-unintentional coincidence, I’d often eat them while sitting in an actual plum tree, an old, gnarled one that never produced fruit, but that bloomed in pristine white every spring. It grew on the island in the middle of our street.

Its dark foliage shaded me from the sun, and from every wound or gash it bled sticky sap that hardened into amber-hued globules that added to the texture of the tree. If you caught the sap at just the right time, you could press your fingers into it and leave a fingerprint. Bees would swarm around the sap, but never bothered me.

Up on the second main trunk, the one that leaned low to the ground after years of growth, heavy snows, and climbing kids, I sat and ate my plum, gnawing the flesh and skin around the pit then tossing the latter to the grass below. It was the end of summer. School would start soon, but for that moment there was just a plum and a boy in a tree.

A few years ago, I documented a disastrous attempt at making pancakes from scratch. I thought that would be much more authentic and good than relying on pre-made mixes like Bisquick, so I printed out a well-reviewed recipe by the Barefoot Contessa, Ina Garten. No offense to the Contessa, and it was probably no fault of the recipe, but the results were, well, awful. Even with butter and non-stick spray, the batter stuck to the grill. When I did get the first pancake up and flipped, it ended up somehow both burnt and raw at the same time. Oh well, I thought, most people say you lose the first two to practice anyway.

Well, I managed to lose the first twelve (out of twelve) to this same scenario, and by that point the kitchen was so thick with the smoke of burnt butter, raw yet blackened batter, and one charred plastic spatula (my only real mistake), that Andy had been awakened from his slumber. At the frazzled end of my already-limited patience, and wanting nothing more than a simple freaking pancake, I begged him to take over.

Literally ten minutes later, a pile of perfect pancakes sat on a plate, awaiting butter and syrup. If I wasn’t so grateful for the sight, I’d have stormed off in a huff of shifted blame. As it were, I gratefully accepted the plate and ate them down, looking over at my dismal try with defeated eyes. I asked him how he did it and he pointed to the Bisquick.

“But that’s not from scratch,” I whined. He said he never heard of anyone making pancakes from scratch. “Umm, have you heard of the Barefoot Contessa? Do you think Martha Stewart uses Bisquick?!” He shook his head and left the room. I finished the pancakes.

Later on, I asked a few friends and it turns out the whole freaking world uses Bisquick, or a pre-made mix for pancakes. Apparently this is one of those things that everyone just knows, but that no one taught me ~ like how to pump gas, or how to tie a shoe without making bunny ears.

When I saw a container of ripe blueberries sitting on the counter a few weeks ago, and felt a hankering for pancakes, I checked to make sure that Andy was still asleep and gave it another try. This time I used the Bisquick recipe ~ and every single pancake, from the first to the last, came out perfectly edible. I was eating them by hand waiting for the next batch to start bubbling. It turns out that in matters of pancakes, Bisquick beats the Barefoot Contessa.