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SUPPER
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| Photo l Felicia D'Ambrosio |
Foodie-ism is a condition both pleasurable and perilous.� The more interested you get in food, the more you eat.� The more you eat, the more you realize you eat way too much.� Though everyone in my family is a great cook and I was always well fed, I didn't think much about food until I began working in restaurants.
In a few short months, I went from being pleased with my daily lunch of dry turkey Wawa hoagies to begging the garde manger for the ends of rare tuna loins, hoovering up the scraps of torchon of foie gras and asking if the staff meal potatoes could be cooked off in duck fat.
In other words, I transformed from an indifferent American teenager into a fat-crazed foodie.� Though I'll always be mad for butter and amorous to the egg, I will admit you can't eat so richly without ending up working a late-stage Marlon Brando look.
The best thing to cut through the jiggle is a massive heap of raw vegetables.� In the same way just a scrap of clothing is sexier than the full monty, just a touch of dressing brings out the best in raw, crunchy red cabbage and daikon sprouts.� A fast gastrique of apple cider vinegar, sugar and red chili flakes punches up the flavor factor without adding major calories.
Simple recipe for Red Cabbage and Sprouts in the Raw, after the jump.
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| Photo l Felicia D'Ambrosio |
Red Cabbage and Sprouts in the Raw
(makes 6 servings)
Go Get This:
Half a head of red cabbage, sliced thin
Two or three handfuls daikon sprouts
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
1 teaspoon red chili flakes
Sea salt, to taste
Now Do This:
In a small, heavy saucepan, dissolve the sugar in a tablespoon of water. Turn the heat to medium, and bring the syrup to a boil, without stirring. Brush down the sides of the saucepan with a wet pastry brush. DO NOT STIR. Boil for five minutes, until the sugar is amber-colored.
Add the apple cider vinegar all at once. DO NOT INHALE VAPORS.� Mixture will bubble wildly.� Add chili flakes.� Stir mixture until all crystallized sugar bits are dissolved back into mixture.� Remove from heat and set aside to cool.
Slice the root end off the cabbage head.� Slice in half and then quarter.� With a long, serrated knife (or on a mandolin) slice the cabbage as thin as you can.
Place sliced cabbage and sprouts in a large bowl.� Pour gastrique over vegetables, season with sea salt.� Toss to coat.� Taste for seasoning.� Add more salt if desired.
Eat. Detox.
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| Soda bread with raisins becomes Spotted Dog |
| Irish Dance & Music |
On Saturday night, a herd of green-clad young professionals went carousing across Third Street, blocking traffic and inspiring much angry honking. As I watched the intoxicated inexpertly attempt to gain entrance to Ansill, of all places, I realized what was going on.
It's the Erin Express, Philadelphia's� sodden bus tour of heroic drunkenness, now in its 35th year. The party is ostensibly in honor of one St. Patrick,� a long-dead European who never once drank a green beer or passionately slobbered all over a complete stranger. I know the way of the Erin Express because I've been on it � just once! But once was enough to gather enough data about wasted white people to last me my entire life. Some of these white people are, on some level, Irish Catholics.
This makes them authentic Irish drinkers, they will shout at you, proudly wearing the dregs of a Carbomb all over their shirt. Authentic!
Around this time of year, claims of authentic Irish whatever proliferate like mushrooms after a spring rain. Irish Soda Bread is one of the most hotly contested. The first exposure I had to the seasonal bread was from an Irish friend, a Dubliner, who brought a loaf to work one day. Dense, faintly sweet and studded with raisins, it was toasted and spread thickly with Irish Kerrygold butter for a heavenly breakfast.
That wasn't Irish Soda Bread. According to the inflexible standards of the Society for the Preservation of Irish Soda Bread (SPISB), what we ate was called Spotted Dog; really a tea cake modified with raisins, sugar or caraway seeds. Their Web site states that true soda bread, a daily bread eaten in Ireland since the mid-19th century, contains only flour, baking soda, buttermilk and salt.
It makes sense. Surely our impoverished Irish ancestors could not have afforded (on a daily basis) the eggs, sugar, candied fruit and whiskey called for in many "authentic" Irish recipes. The SPISB explains that in the first part of the 20th century, American newspapers would often publish "authentic" Irish recipes in conjunction with St. Patrick's Day, modified to appeal to American tastes for sugar.
No matter which side of the authenticity debate you stand on, both sweet, raisin-filled tea cakes and traditional, unsweetened soda bread make a brill brekkie. Check out three different recipes, both traditional and modified, after the jump.
Alton Brown provides an excellent recipe for Spotted Dog (which he calls Irish Soda Bread) on the Food Network Site.
Bobby Flay's show did "Tasting Ireland," where he visited a bakery that turns out hundreds of loaves of traditional soda bread every day. Irish food writer Darina Allen contributed her recipe here.
The Society for the Preservation of Irish Soda Bread provides the traditional, absolutely no-frills recipes for both soft white and wheat soda bread on their site.
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| A blank canvas |
| Photo l Michael Persico |
The comedian Jim Gaffiagan once said, "A muffin is nothing more than a bald cupcake."
It's so true. Though every muffin has the potential to be a hand-held panoply of breakfast flavors, too often they succumb to overgrown size and sugar and end up little more than a.m. dessert. The healthy-sounding apple bran muffin at Starbucks weighs in at 310 calories and 30 grams of sugar. If you want a doughnut, why not ditch the charade and just eat a doughnut?
I've lately been craving a muffin with more substance than sugar. A savory muffin complements an eggy breakfast, but also fits in with the dinner crowd. The best muffin recipe I've ever used is from Mom's ancient copy of the red Betty Crocker Cookbook, complete with photo illustrations on orangey '70s film stock. The basic recipe allows for additions of any flavoring element you like, from virtuous veggies to crumbled bacon.
Suggestions:
- Chop half a fresh fennel bulb and one large onion into a quarter-inch dice. Toss with two tablespoons of extra-virgin olive oil, salt and pepper and roast in a preheated 400 degree oven for 25 minutes, until soft and sweet. Mix into muffin batter.
-Chop three sprigs of fresh rosemary as small as you can, or measure out 1 1/2 tablespoons of dry rosemary. Add to muffin batter, along with 3/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese.
-Peel and dice two apples. Add to muffin batter, along with 3/4 cup grated Cheddar cheese.
-Cook three strips of bacon until crisp. Drain on paper towels, then crumble. Add to muffin batter, along with 3/4 cup grated smoked Gouda cheese and a three sprigs of picked-over thyme.
Recipe for Basic Muffin Batter from the 1978 edition of the Betty Crocker Cookbook, after the jump.
Betty Crocker's Basic Muffin Batter (p. 199)
Go Get This:
1 egg
3/4 cup milk
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/3 cup sugar
3 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
Now Do This:
Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Grease bottoms only of about 12 medium muffin cups, 2 1/2 X 1 1/4 inches. Beat egg; stir in milk and oil. Stir in remaining ingredients all at once, just until flour is moistened (batter will be lumpy). Fill muffin cups about 3/4 full. Bake until golden brown, about 20 minutes. Immediately remove from pans. Yields about one dozen muffins.
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| Just fifteen minutes under the broiler produces a dish worthy of linen tablecloths. |
| Photo l Michael Persico |
A quickly roasted (under the broiler) leg of lamb is a frequent dinner at my boyfriend's parents house. His mom is Lebanese, and she uses a variety of spices and flavor combinations in her cooking that are unfamiliar but wonderfully satisfying. Here, a boneless leg of lamb is rubbed with salt, garlic and Syrian brown pepper blend called da'a, which can be found at Bitar's Market. Da'a is a blend of allspice, black and white pepper, nutmeg, cloves and ginger; it plays nicely with the gamey flavor of lamb.
Once the sinew and fat is cut away from this inexpensive piece of meat, it rests in a marinade of olive oil, balsamic vinegar, garlic and seasoning. A fast broil six inches from the heat source produces meat that is nicely crisped on the outside and a melting medium-rare inside. Serve with simply roasted potatoes and eggplant and a green salad. The roasting pan will collect natural jus from the lamb, you can reduce this into a thicker sauce if you're feeling fancy. Otherwise, just use a spoon to apply some jus to your dish, and dinner is served.
Look for Syrian Pepper (da'a) at Bitar's Market, 947 Federal St., 215-755-1121
Quick-Roasted Leg of Lamb with Syrian Pepper
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Serves five
Go Get This:
5 lb. boneless leg of lamb
7-10 cloves of garlic, peeled and sliced thin
Salt
1/3 cup Extra-virgin olive oil
1/4 cup Balsamic vinegar
Now Do This:
Unroll the leg of lamb. Assemble a sharp chef's knife and paring knife near to hand. Using both knives, cut away all of the fat and sinew from the leg. Be patient; this takes a little while. Leave enough of the fascia that holds the muscles together so the roast does not fall apart.
With the paring knife, cut about ten small slits in one side of the roast. Insert the sliced garlic into each slit. Season the leg generously with salt and da'a. Pour over extra-virgin olive oil to coat, then a smaller amount of balsamic vinegar. Rub the seasonings and liquids all over the leg. Turn the leg over and repeat on the other side with just garlic, salt and da'a. Rub marinade in thoroughly.
Cover with foil or plastic wrap and rest in refrigerator for two hours, then turn the leg over, rubbing marinade in again. Rest at least one more hour in the fridge, or overnight.
Preheat oven to Broil. Place flattened, uncovered leg of lamb in broiler, no less than six inches from the heat source, for fifteen minutes, flipping over halfway through, until thickest section of leg is medium-rare. Serve hot or room temperature with jus spooned over.
OR
Preheat a gas grill to low. Spread the leg out to make it as flat as possible, and grill until medium-rare, turning once. Thicker sections can be butterflied to make the leg approximately the same thickness throughout.
Video by Neal Santos for Philadelphia City Paper
The phrase "dinner party" conjures up shiny, idealized images of couples laughingly emerging from the elevator into pre-war apartments decked in flickering candles, to doff furs and hats, basking in the sparkle of freshly polished stemware filled with champagne.
The reality of the dinner party, however, is less Bonfire of the Vanities and more How to Lose Friends and Alienate People. Food allergies and dietary requirements, keeping grudge holders from forking each other over cocktails and lack of space can cow even the most assured hostess.
The key to a dinner gathering with both style and substance lies in the planning. Most people have a nexus of different groups of friends; for balance and lively conversation, invite a few from each group and introduce them to each other. Ask guests to contribute wine to the dinner and send them around pouring for others. Make detailed lists and do everything you can ahead of time — then, as people start to arrive, delegate. Shy attendees will feel safer when their hands are occupied with some critical task, be it arranging hors d'oeuvres or choosing the playlist.
A dinner party for a large group need not be expensive, especially considering Philly's plethora of butchers, bakers and produce vendors. Buy vegetables the day before the event, in quantity, at the Italian or Reading Terminal Markets. Visit your local butcher for good deals on inexpensive cuts of meat and braise them all day to perfume the house. Employ the co-host technique: Join forces with a friend, choose the better-adapted house to stage the party in, and split costs, cooking and shopping. The result will be a livelier, more diverse group and half the work and expense.
My friend Kelly Anura and I have been co-hosting dinner parties for a few years, with surprising success. Her kitchen is spacious enough to accommodate 12, and she has the biggest Le Creuset cocotte I've ever seen, which makes creating a huge slow-cooked meal much simpler — even though it takes both of us to wrestle it out of the oven. We prepared a winter dinner, with a menu of roasted bone marrow with parsley salad, braised short ribs over cauliflower purée and sautéed greens with apple-cider gastrique for just about $11 per person. Friends brought copious amounts of wine, and the conversation veered from polite early in the evening to raucous post-meal. Even though the smoke alarms went off twice, the hearty meal was well-received — and the men even did the dishes.
Recipes for the $11-a-head Winter Dinner Party after the jump.
Roasted Bone Marrow with Parsley Salad & Croûtes
Adapted from Fergus Henderson's method at St. John (serves 12 as a hearty appetizer)
Go Get This:
3-4 lbs. beef or veal bones, cut into two-inch lengths (ask the butcher to do this on the saw)
One loaf crusty bread, sliced and toasted or grilled (that's croûtes)
2 bunches flat-leaf parsley, washed and picked off stems
2 shallots, sliced thinly
Small handful of capers
Juice of one lemon
1 and 1/2 tbsp. evoo (extra-virgin olive oil)
Sea salt
Black pepper
Now Do This:
If you choose, and have 24 hours to prepare, soak the cut marrow bones in several changes of very salty water. The salt draws out most of the blood and the roasted marrow will be a pretty cream color. If you don't have time to soak or just don't care so much, Fergus Henderson's widely-used recipe from his famous nose-to-tail London restaurant, St. John, does not call for any soaking. The blood will pool on top of the roasted marrow and the color will be browner, but it tastes just as good.
Preheat oven to 450 degrees F.
Toss the parsley with the sliced shallots and capers. Shake the lemon juice and olive oil in a jar until blended, add pinch of salt and pepper. Dress parsley salad to just coat leaves, when bones come out of the oven.
Place bones in a foil-linen ovenproof skillet or casserole. Roast for 15-20 minutes, until marrow is soft and wobbly -- don't let it go too long or all of the marrow will melt and drizzle out -- very sad, as Fergus says.
Remove bones from pan with tongs. Spread marrow on toasted crusty bread, sprinkle with a touch of salt and top with parsley salad. Mmmm, meat butter.
Cauliflower Purée with Mascarpone & Truffle Oil
(serves 12, as starch under main course)
Go Get This:
3 heads cauliflower
Half-gallon milk, whole or 2%
One 12-oz. container mascarpone cheese
3 tbsp. cold butter, cut into small cubes
Small splash truffle oil
Salt to taste
Now Do This:
Slice the florets off the cauliflower heads by cutting a cone shape from the large, central stem. Break cauliflower florets into one-inch pieces.
Place all cauliflower in large stockpot, pour in milk. Bring to a simmer over medium heat.
Cook cauliflower until tender but not mushy, about fifteen minutes.
With a slotted spoon, remove cauliflower to large food processor. Add just one ladelful of milk to food processor; more can be added as needed for blending.
Blend until cauliflower forms a silky purée; add milk as needed to keep processing smooth.
Salt to taste; add container of mascarpone cheese and cold cubed butter. Blend.
Taste and adjust seasoning; add small splash of truffle oil and blend again.
Taste and add more truffle oil if desired.
Reserve until ready to serve: heat in a large, shallow pan over low heat until warm all the way through.
Wine-braised Short Ribs with Leeks and Peppercorns
(serves 12 people as a main course)
Go Get This:
9 lbs. beef short ribs (regular-cut, not flanken-cut); most surface fat trimmed off
2 tbsp. bacon fat or butter
3 bunches leeks, sliced thin & thoroughly rinsed to remove sandy grit
1 large onion, diced
2 tbsp. peppercorns
1/2 tbsp. salt (or to taste)
1 bottle full-bodied, low-acid red wine (merlot, cabernet sauvignon, syrah)
Additional chicken stock and white wine to partially cover ribs
4-5 sprigs mixed fresh herbs (rosemary, thyme, sage, bay leaf, chervil)
Now Do This:
Place a cast-iron 9-quart dutch oven over medium-high heat and sear ribs, two at a time, to develop a brown crust on all sides. Set aside.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
Melt bacon fat or butter in dutch oven and sweat onions down, 3 minutes. Add leeks, season with salt, and sweat down for at least 15 minutes. Add peppercorns and fresh herbs and stir to combine. Turn the heat up to high.
Pour in half the bottle of red wine to deglaze: scrape all browned bits off bottom of dutch oven as they are loosened by the liquid.
Add short ribs back to dutch oven, stacking. Pour in rest of red wine, add white wine and stock until ribs are just covered. The top ribs may stick out a little; that is okay. Bring to a boil. Cover dutch oven.
Place entire dutch oven in preheated 350 degree oven. Every hour, rotate ribs so all get time fully submerged in cooking liquid. Skim fat off surface if necessary. Cook for at least four hours, until meat is tender to point of falling off the bone.
Serve each person one shortrib, over cauliflower purée and with some cooking liquid ladled over.
Skillet Greens with Cider Gastrique and Crispy Shallots
Kelly and I cribbed this recipe straight from Epicurious, which has millions of useful recipes and techniques. Check it out here. Gastrique is delicious and very fun to make. Just don't inhale the gas that is released when you pour the vinegar into the sugar mixture, it won't feel very nice on the old sinuses. Tastes great, though, and provides a sharp contrast and obligatory vegetables to an otherwise decadent meal.
I love your premier video. The dinner pary looked like what every dinner party should be; ( and so often isn't) great food, great conversation, and friends who laugh when the smoke alarm goes off!! Give us more, lots more. XOXOXO
[...] easy to spruce it up a bit for company with something inspiring like Felicia and Kelly’s Parsley salad. It’s also something you make in a huge batch and store for the rest of week as a quick [...]
Perfect video, short, sweet, straight to the point, and a great idea. Good job!
[...] year, Meal Ticket’s Felicia D organized an $11-a-head winter dinner party. This time around, she shows you how to shop for and prepare a super-easy dish for a get-together. [...]
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Seems like no one wants to give anchovies any love, at least not in public. What do you want on your pizza? Anything but anchovies. Why don't you like anchovies? Eww, salty stinky little fish! Raise your hand if you can't stand anchovies but just adore the boquerones at Amada. Guess what they are? Some super-boutique, marinated, salty little fish, that's what.
The good news: the ever-helpful Brothers Di Bruno and Claudio King of Cheese sell neat little fillets of Spanish white anchovies; cleaned, marinated, and free of bones, guts, fishy aromas and anything else that might offend delicate sensibilities. Not that I'm sneering. I've been skeeved on foreign fish since I was old enough to say "Not anchovies!" on my pizza. Only in the last few years have anchovies and I made a nodding acquaintance. You can't write about food, and go to restaurants 300 times a year, without biting into a few things you secretly fear.
That's why gentle, marinated anchovy fillets (boquerones) are a friendly introduction to the world of small, oily and delicious for the fish fearful. True of both boquerones and the hot Spanish transfer student in your high school: an empty wallet gets you nowhere. At Di Bruno Bros., white anchovies are $49.99 a pound. You only need about ten dollars' worth to cook with to create a satisfying meal for four, or an appetizer for the gang.
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Some boquerones-purist will howl over me putting the fancy fish on a pizza, but tough calamari. You eat what you like, and I'll profane my expensive ingredients any way I see fit.
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| Proof dough in a warm place. |
| Photo l Felicia D'Ambrosio |
Mitch Mandell's Pizza Dough is one of the easiest and most reliable dough recipes and pizza-making methods around — he includes instructions for making a basic yeast-raised dough in a food processor, stand mixer, bread machine or by hand. As Mitch says, dough making ain't brain surgery — but there are as many ways to screw it up as there are foodies cruising the Internet. Follow the directions, measure carefully, and make sure your dough has a warm place to rise. The pilot light of a gas-fired oven will keep the oven warm enough for the dough to come alive. Lacking that, I put my covered bowl of dough a few feet away from the space heater and it perked up nicely. Adaptation is the key to dinner.
After rolling out the dough, I dressed it with some good extra-virgin olive oil, ricotta cheese, sea salt, herbs and a small school of anchovies; then into a 500-degree oven on the pizza stone for just a few minutes. It tasted amazing, and the omega-3 rich, low-mercury little swimmers are ideal "brain food" — check out this Telegraph.uk article on eating oily fish.
The Mitch Mandell recipe yields a healthy quantity of dough, perhaps five personal-sized pizzas or two bigger pies. I took a shot at rolling the dough very thinly and pinching it around individual anchovy fillets. These got a sprinkle of sea salt and just a minute in the oven, and there you have some boquerone empanadas. Some were super oily and came open in the oven. They tasted lovely anyway, and should please many a fishy foodie as an amuse bouche.
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| Photo l Michael Persico |
The unsung hero of a really satisfying burger is something far less dramatic than than a fiery, 800-degree grill or the finest ground sirloin in all the land. It's something that has been demonized since the early '80s, when scrupulous dieters began to avoid it at all costs, their bleak existence framed by boneless, skinless chicken breasts and steamed broccoli.
It's fat.
The even distribution of fat throughout a burger creates the velvety texture and chew of the best versions of the sandwich, and keeps the meat moist even as it is subjected to the blistering heat of the grill or cast-iron pan. Though beef burgers occupy the king's position at the top of the sandwich hierarchy, a cow burger, even not such a large one, is a huge, digestion-challenging meal. Eat a burger loaded with cheese, bacon, long hots and some kind of flavored mayonnaise and the only place you're headed is to the couch to groan off your lunch. Substitute turkey, salmon or chicken between the buns and the burger becomes something that won't kill you, but provide enough energy for you to slam through your day with a full, not crammed, stomach.
Turkey burgers are easy to make and deliver a satisfying meal, provided you remember the fat rule. Since turkey is by nature very lean — either 99 or 93 percent lean, in most cases — you need to add fat back to the ground meat to ensure a juicy turnout. Sauté diced red onion in a tablespoon of bacon fat. When the softened, fat-coated pieces of onion are mixed with the turkey meat, they will add moisture and flavor throughout the lean burger. Butter performs a similar function.
The fun of turkey burgers is the meat is like a blank slate, flavor-wise. You can add anything you like to it and it will accept the flavors gladly. Use the caramelized onions as a base, and develop from there. Fresh herbs, especially parsley, cilantro, chervil or thyme can go into the mix; hot sauce, soy sauce, tamari and mustard can all lend a spicy kick. Do avoid very sugary sauces, like barbecue, which will burn on the surface of the burger and could make the whole patty taste burnt.
Since we're so well-behaved, eating turkey burgers and all, why not throw a fried egg on top of the thing to make it a burger à cheval? You've earned it.
Recipe for Turkey Burger à Cheval with Sriracha Mayonnaise after the jump.
Turkey Burger à Cheval with Sriracha Mayonnaise
Makes 4 burgers
Go Get This:
24 ounces ground turkey meat
4 buns of your choice
4 romaine lettuce leaves
1 tablespoon bacon fat or butter
One medium onion, diced small
Half bunch flat-leaf parsley, chopped
Salt
Pepper
Heaping teaspoon Dijon mustard
4 eggs, fried and sunny-side up
Sriracha sauce, to taste
Mayonnaise, to taste
Now Do This:
In a small sauté pan, melt the bacon fat or butter over medium heat. When melted, add the diced onion. Cook down gently until lightly browned and soft. Remove from heat and set aside.
In a large bowl, combine ground turkey, cooked onion, parsley, mustard, dashes of salt and pepper, and a squeeze of sriracha. Mix thoroughly with hands. Shape into four equal-sized balls, and flatten to make patties.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
Heat a large cast-iron (or oven-safe) pan over medium-high heat. Add a splash of high-temp oil, like peanut or canola, just to coat the bottom with a thin layer. When oil is hot and shimmering, place burgers in pan.
Cook for at least five minutes to create a brown crust on the turkey burgers. Flip over and allow to cook on that side for three minutes, then place pan in oven. Cook in oven for at least six more minutes. Turkey burgers are done when there is no pink left inside.
While burgers are in oven, combine mayonnaise with sriracha to taste in a small bowl. Set aside.
Fry the four eggs, sunny-side up, just when you take the burgers out of the oven.
Spread sriracha mayo on both sides of bun, add romaine lettuce leaf, place turkey burger on top of lettuce and top with a fried egg. Add a salad and serve.
Looks pretty darn good.... and makes a meal for breakfast, lunch, or dinner! peace to all from Indiana, USA mTw
[...] in a hot bowl of Korean bibimbap, and offers instructions for getting fried eggs just right. We can’t get enough of the fried-egg topped classic, burger à cheval, even if it’s ...For many cooks, poaching eggs proves frustrating. Meal Ticket learned a fun, useful trick from Vetri [...]
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Meal Ticketers Drew and Felicia have been accused more than once of having a carnivorous bias. It's not that we don't like vegetables — it's just, well, why waste the valuable stomach real estate on salad when there is so much lovely meat to be consumed? Sorry. The good news is, not only do know vegetarians, we count a few among our very best friends. Joining us for our SUPPER feature today is Janina Larenas: vegetarian since she was in the womb, gelato-master at Capogiro Gelato Artisans and creator of Little Isobel all-natural fruit preserves and herb jellies.
Janina developed her recipe for a long-cooked, hearty vegetarian stew by combining several beef stew recipes, making substitutions and adjustments. Seitan (wheat gluten meat substitute) is layered with a variety of vegetables and aromatics in a slow cooker; just a cup of red wine and a splash of apple cider vinegar extract maximum flavor. Janina picked up a $12, 4-quart Crock-Pot at the thrift shop at Eighth and Wolf; prowl your local second-hand shop for a good deal. The stew can also be made in a covered pot or deep, lidded baking dish and placed in the oven for 4 hours at 200 degrees Fahrenheit.
A few recommendations on slow-cooking: Choose a fuller-bodied wine with some residual sugar for cooking, like Merlot or Cabernet Sauvignon, over lighter wines like Pinot Noir and Côtes du Rhône that have less sugar and more acid. No matter how horribly tempted, do not lift the lid of your slow-cooker. Dramatic temperature drops from lifting the lid add cooking time and subtract moisture.
Layer your way to a stick-to-your-ribs veggie dinner with Janina Larenas' Slow-Cooked Seitan & Veggie Stew, after the jump.
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| Janina peels broccoli stems for her stew. |
| All Photos l Felicia D'Ambrosio |
Janina Larenas' Slow-Cooked Seitan & Veggie Stew
Go Get This:
One 12 oz. package braised seitan (wheat meat, wheat gluten), crumbled
2 tbsp. flour
1 tsp. salt
1 sprig fresh rosemary
3 sprigs fresh thyme
Favorite vegetables, peeled if necessary, cut in finger-size pieces
Like: peas, potatoes, carrots, one apple, onion, parsnips, celery root, sweet potatoes, squash, garlic, peeled broccoli stems
1 cup full-bodied red wine
1 cup water or veg stock
1/4 cup apple-cider vinegar
Now Do This:
Layer all ingredients, beginning with seitan, into slow-cooker or pot. No need to chop or strip herbs, just pick out stems as you serve the stew later. Cook on low setting for at least 4 hours, or in a 200 degree F oven. Serve by itself, or over noodles if desired.
[...] but certainly not least, don't forget to make a root vegetable stew for dinner, and â of course â cut those veggies into squares. Tags: square root [...]
[...] my dear, genius friend Janina Larenas‘ recipes and techniques on Meal Ticket before. Her slow-cooked seitan and veggie stew and resourceful method for vegetable stock are the products of her lifelong vegetarian status and [...]
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| Curry, minus Katsu |
| All photos l Felicia D'Ambrosio |
At a post-wedding brunch this summer, a cousin inquired if I liked to cook. "Oh yeah," I replied glibly. "Cooking is practically all I do. Then eating." He pressed on. "What do you like to cook?" What do I like to cook...
Grandmother food. My grandmother's, yours, everybody's. And everything from The New York Times. I am in a long-term relationship with the Times; we've been seeing each other since I was old enough to rummage Dad's discarded broadsheets in search of the Style and Dining In sections. Sunday's Magazine, in particular, has outlasted five boyfriends and three cars.
In the October 26, 2008 issue of the Magazine, the food page was lit by a floating, halo'd, panko-crusted pork cutlet. Tonkatsu Curry, it read; the bacon cheeseburger, the meatloaf and gravy, the fried-goodness, hangover-curing food of Japan. The writer, Sam Sifton, explored this magical mashup of European, Indian and Japanese cuisine and come out on the other end with a recipe that turns a lot of butter, a big lump of ground pork and Cuisinart full of fruit and vegetables into something that flies far beyond the definition of delicious.
Charmed by the photo and lured by the essay extolling the porky roux and "heroic in size" pork cutlet, boyfriend and I got busy assembly line-style on our first batch of katsu curry. The resultant bowl of fragrant sauce over sticky rice, crowned with a huge McPiggy nugget, was heavenly. And heavy.
This is a big meal. Hangover-killers are always comprised of grease, eggs, meat and hot sauce, not salad. In the second iteration of katsu curry, we simply left out the giant fried pork cutlet to focus on the aromatic curry and rice element. It's no less satisfying, and cuts about a thousand calories off the dish.
Drool over Sam Sifton's recipe for Tonkatsu Curry; make the call on keeping or chucking the pork cutlet depending on your personal weather. S&B Oriental Curry powder, which makes the dish, as well as tonkatsu sauce, are available at Hung Vuong Supermarket, Wing Phat Plaza, 1122-1138 Washington Ave., 215-336-2803.
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Lucky for me I live in Tokyo. After reading this I went and had some here in Roppongi. It was delicious. Still hungover, though....
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| Baba ghanouj and pita |
| Photo l Felicia D'Ambrosio |
"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."
This first sentence of Michael Pollan's New York Times essay on nutritionism was written not quite two years ago. Simple as it seems, he goes on to describe what those seven words really mean. Eat whole food, not "edible foodlike substances." Consume mostly plants, especially leaves. Cook. Get out of the supermarket and get down with the farmer's market. Pollan also cites Thomas Jefferson's advice to treat meat more like a flavoring than a food.
The infant weeks of the new year are rife with unlikely resolutions. Lose weight, go to the gym, stop smoking/drinking/Internet porn-ing. Mine is simple: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.
Middle Eastern and Mediterranean ways of eating make use of a little meat and lots of whole grains and vegetables, along with healthy fats like olive oil. One of my favorites is baba ghanouj, a simple roasted eggplant dip. A few tablespoons of extra-virgin olive oil add a bit of fruity brightness to the smoky eggplants, along with a handful of chopped parsley and a generous turn of black pepper. The dip can be scooped up with toasted whole wheat pita or raw vegetables for the truly virtuous, and makes a great pita sandwich or roll-up with a few leaves of romaine or arugula.
This recipe for baba ghanouj was kindly explained to me by Gloria Bitar, who was born in Lebanon and is looking good at 81.
Check out the Tete-approved method after the jump.
Tete's Baba Ghanouj
Go Get This:
2 medium eggplants
Handful of flat-leaf parsley, chopped
2 cloves garlic, diced tiny or smushed through a garlic press. Adjust to taste, if you like more garlic go for it.
Salt to taste
Pepper to taste
Juice of one lemon (if desired. Tete doesn't do this, but i snuck it in mine)
Two tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
Now Do This:
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Wait until it is truly preheated, at least 15 minutes.
Poke the two eggplants all over with a fork. Place them in a roasted pan or on a cookie sheet. Roast at 375 for one hour.
When eggplants are soft all over, remove from oven and peel. Use a fork and a knife to hold the flesh of the eggplant and pull away the skin. Rough chop eggplant flesh into cubes.
Place eggplant, crushed or diced garlic, lemon juice, salt, pepper and parsley to large mixing bowl. Mash everything with a potato masher or the back of a big fork.
Taste, adjust seasoning. Lightly mash in olive oil.
Serve room temp or cold from refrigerator with pita, lavash, and cut-up raw veggies.
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