Category: Delicious

In Defense of Fritos

I once was of the opinion that the simple Frito, an incredibly delicious and copiously fatty corn chip that has starred equally in the boat-ride-adventures of my youth and the roadside-frito-pie-exploits of my recent adulthood, was the devil’s handiwork. Something so delicious must be wrought of the nasties: acesulfame-k, monosodium glucanazoleium, or- at least- yellow 5.

Until today. Today I learned that the humble Frito has but three ingredients: Whole Corn, Corn Oil, and Salt. Heavens to betsy! It’s practically as natural as a home-made tortilla on the open range! Praise the lord and pass the sour cream.

You’re welcome.

frito image from here.

It’s a Lemon

My mother keeps a meyer lemon tree in a glass room off the back of our house in Virginia and every winter it yields exactly one lemon. This year she brought this singular bounty with her up to New York for the holidays and we had big plans for it. Maybe we’d make meyer lemon hot toddies, maybe we’d put the zest over braised fennel bulbs (a recipe cut from the New York Times Magazine five years ago and so loved the paper is almost literally see-through from having been groped often by olive oily fingers), maybe we’d… make lemonade? But, alas, the lemon got repeatedly passed over in favor of Chinatown Dim Sum and Staten Island pizza. As of yesterday, it was still just sitting there. Beautiful, a saturated yellowy orange the color of organic egg yolks or fiestaware, solitary, special. So…. what to do? I did some light googling and came across this article from the LA Times, 100 Things to Do with a Meyer Lemon (ahhh California, where such lemons are so uproariously plentiful that suggestions #35 is “Throw a Meyer lemon for your dog to catch and play with; you’ll lose the lemon, but your dog’s breath will smell fantastic.”). And though I only had one lemon, I decided to make Marcus Samuelsson’s Shrimp piri piri with quick-preserved Meyer lemonsThe quick preserving of the lemon peel was absolutely fantastic- yielding a sweet-salty-sour-somewhat pickled-somewhat candied-sort of bitter-sort of crystalline zest that is making my mouth water now just thinking about it. The preserved lemon was perfect with the cilantro-and-pepper spice of the shrimp, but really, it would be fabulous on many things in many flavor directions- pricking into the slow heat and sweetness of a curry, in lieu of lime on adobo roasted chicken and rice, sprinkled over fresh pizza with thyme and ricotta, marinated with fresh fish and olives, over pasta with just a little hard cheese… So, at its heart the solitary lemon traveled up from the south to yield something even better than a hot toddy (if you can believe it): a new easy, cheap, and delicious trick to turn the usual mundane recessionary meal into something truly spectacular. Here’s the recipe for the quick preserved lemons, find the rest of the shrimp piri piri recipe here.

Quick-preserved Meyer lemons

6 Meyer lemons
1/4 cup kosher salt
1/4 cup sugar

1. Using a vegetable peeler, peel the lemons, trying to keep away from the white pith. (If necessary, scrape any pith away from the peels with a small knife.) Squeeze the juice from the peeled lemons into a bowl and reserve: You should have about 1 cup. Add water to bring the liquid up to 2 cups; set aside to reserve.

2. Place the peel and 2 cups of water in a saucepan and bring to a rolling boil. Drain. Repeat this procedure once more. Return the drained peel to the pan, add the reserved juice, salt and sugar and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer for 10 minutes. Remove from the heat and set aside to cool. Makes about three-eighths cup.

Since I only had one lemon, I used 2tsp each of salt and sugar and it made enough preserved lemon for Sweetheart and I to totally enjoy. Good to know. When life gives you lemon, quick preserve it.

Piri Piri image via Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times

 

Hornsby Family Egg Nog

For me, Christmas wouldn’t be complete without making a large batch of celebrated Hornsby Family Egg Nog (made from scratch, served with love, fresh nutmeg, and ideally tons of fried chicken and warm biscuits with Smithfield Ham). This year the batch was perhaps the best it’s ever been- which is in no small part due to by the glorious gift of Araucana Blue eggs straight from Jay and Katie Rose’s chickens. Araucanas are a South American breed that lay thick-skinned eggs with yolks the color of setting suns. The shells of their eggs come in a range of beautiful delicate colors: pale aquamarine and celadon, eau de nil, sky, and light dappled ochre. See above. The fact that these chickens have beards, are named after lady blues singers, and are presided over by the Grand Plumed Rooster Alicia Jr. just makes the funfetti toned eggs all the more party ready. Which is a good thing since the nog calls for 30 of them (we triple the recipe for our holiday party, soooo, yeah). Talking about the eggs brings up the antipathy that many people have for egg nog- maybe you’ve only ever had store bought (oof), maybe you went to a party where some poor fool made it with gin (travesty), maybe raw eggs give you the willies (no help or hope for you, my friend), but this version, with its hand-written recipe and various and copious brown liquors is surprisingly, almost unbelievably light and fresh, sweet and smooth, spicy, silky, and secretly very strong. Here’s the recipe, straight out of the Hornsby family cookbook, “From the Kitchen at the Hornsby House”, written out by my Great Aunt Marian.Our family is one of barrel chested watermen-turned-oilmen-turned-land men, consummate entertainers, gentlemen raconteurs, merry pranksters, bon vivants, music makers and songstresses, and long time intimates of the marvelous stiff southern drink… when it would be Christmas at the Big House, laughter would shake the chandeliers, and instruments would be played until the wee hours. I always hope to have done them proud.

recipe notes:
– I use Benedictine and Brandy (B&B) instead of Brandy and Southern Comfort
– Tripled, the bourbon comes out to a handle, Jim Beam is more than satisfactory (though Maker’s Mark is sweeter).
– You’re left with the whites of the eggs, make a frittata!

Greene Hill Food Co-op: Open for Business!

After a few long years of hard, hard work and inspired perspiration this past weekend the beautiful and brand-spanking-new Greene Hill Food Co-op threw open its doors for the first time. The block itself seemed to roar with kale and a groundswell of happy, hungry humans with pure hearts and canvas bags. The idea of the food co-op is sort of communism-light: anyone can pay an equal, one-time, refundable share to join, everyone shares the work, and everyone enjoys the (literal, abundant) fruits of this labor in the form of gorgeous fresh produce, sweet and light loaves of locally baked bread, and chicken that perhaps wore a cowboy hat as it roamed the open range- all at reasonable prices. In a neighborhood where the food options are limited to the polarizing spectrum of corner bodegas where plantain chips are the only vegetable in sight and fancy-pants specialty food stores that have fresh figs and Humboldt Fog for $16/a quarter pound, this sort of place- where good food isn’t just well curated and lovely, but is sustainable, affordable, and available to all- is a jewel.

There are a few different options for membership plans, based on income: The Avocado Plan (where the well off can pay their share and also the share of someone else), The Lettuce Plan (where the comfortable can support themselves), The Carrot Plan (where the pretty broke can pay their share in installments), and The Apple Plan (where those who qualify pay a reduced fee and can make the membership investment in installments over the next five years- also the co-op takes food stamps). Sweetheart and I are in a weird place with this- being writers and musicians has us hovering essentially at the poverty line (eek)- but- we’re also participants in an active food culture, enthusiastic home cooks, the type of people who watch King Corn streaming on Netflix, have friends farming at Blue Hill and working for The Greenhorns, the type of people who went to Oberlin. In short: we are well armed with the righteous knowledge of food. We know how to provide ourselves with fresh, delicious meals from scratch and prioritize the ability/desire to choose to put a fair portion of our income towards eating (and living) well. Extra money doesn’t go towards physical luxuries, it gets put towards a stoop garden and non-agribusiness meats (and once- dinner at Chez Pannisse). Even though we may not have a cent to pay the rent, but we’re gonna make it, we may have to eat beans every day, but they’re going to be sustainable garbanzos. The Greene Hill Food Co-op is newly open, but the most exciting thing (in addition to a quart of Annie’s Goddess Dressing for $3.50, and the prettiest loaves of rye I’ve seen outside of Orwasher’s) is what this may mean for the future, for the neighborhood. The co-op gives a sense of ownership and personal responsibility over the food we eat, it makes the opportunity to pick healthy options not just readily available to all but totally desirable, and it shares the knowledge and power that comes from making your own food choices with everyone. It’s actually DOING something about it all instead of just reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma and being abstractly horrified at pictures of factory farms. And, of course, we’re still taking members. Sign up here and let’s go grocery shopping.Images including vegetables from the Greene Hill Co-Op’s Flickr, see more here.
Here’s an interesting, easily digestible article about food equality.

Murray’s Extravaganza

When Rachel tells you that one of her oldest friends left his boring/unfullfilling/perhaps-soon-to-be-nonexistant white collar job to become a cheese monk at Murray’s, and that you should come over for his hand-picked cheese’n’charcuterie selections, run, don’t walk- first to the wine store and then- over to Rachel and Nate’s brand new Brooklyn digs to partake. Figs and elastic waist pants recommended.

Landmarked Gingerbread Brownstone, Floor-Through, DFP, Original Moldings

Today is the day that the Christmas season officially starts! Sweetheart and I are getting our tree today and the girls are coming over tonight for some hometown Colonial Williamsburg crafting (O it’s marvelous to be from Virginia, you can embrace pioneer spirit and make complicated decorations out of fruit and vines totally unironically), I’ve got Vince Gauraldi cued up, and also a strange and wonderfully joyous new-to-me collection of Swedish Christmas Carols I stumbled on delightedly from Door16 (free downloadable! God Jul!). With all of this in the works, how utterly perfect was it that my friend Renee posted this staggeringly lovely, utterly pitch perfect Gingerbread Brownstone on her wonderful (aspirational) food blog Kitchen Table Scraps. It’s like a scale model of my house! I can just picture Sweetheart and I carrying a miniature tree in through the basement door under the stairs… and I can almost see Nipsey Russell peeking through the spun sugar windowpanes through the gingerbread “window guards” (a nice gentle Brooklynese way of saying bars), in fact the giant “Whisk” installation might be right next door in the to-scale-Pratt-Sculpture-Garden. Bike Parking to the side.

Pumpkin Whoopie Pies

My ever-lovin’ Mama sent me this recipe and I have to say: it’s simply divine. On the scale of easy-to-execute vs. satisfying-to-eat-and-share this recipe is almost as perfect as the one for my favorite almond cake. Especially in this late-fall-holiday time there’s something to be said for a sweet indulgence that hits all of the nom-nom-nom flavor necessities of the season, without requiring you to make crust from scratch or procure leaf lard  or go to anywhere fancier than a Piggly Wiggly for the ingredients. We’ll leave that to Christmas.

Ingredients

1 cup pumpkin, canned
1/3 cup butter, softened
1 spice cake mix
1-2 teaspoons Pumpkin Pie Spice (I didn’t have this store-bought, so I just used cinnamon, nutmeg, and a tiny bit of cardamom… but anything in that profile will do)
2 eggs, room temperature
1/2 cup milk

Cream Cheese Caramel Filling

3 oz cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup butter
1/3 cup caramel ice cream topping
1-2 cups powdered sugar

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and spray a cookie sheet with non stick cooking spray
Cream together the pumpkin and butter
Add cake mix, pumpkin pie spice, eggs and milk
Beat just until blended
Drop by cookie dough scoop or tablespoon
Bake about 10-12 minutes until cookies are slightly firm

Cream Cheese Caramel Filling

Beat together cream cheese and butter until fluffy
Add the caramel topping and mix well
Gradually add the powdered sugar until desired consistency

This makes enough to share- maybe 20-24 or so pies depending on how large you make the uppers and lowers. Eat your heart out Oreo.

Tea Party of One

One of my favorite things about the chillying weather (despite frequent deluges, this past week must be one of the most beautimous in New York history… also helps that Sweetheart and I have been listening to Billie Holliday on repeat) is the transition from cold brew coffee back to plain old dark and delicious hot coffee. But despite my militant affection for coffee, there’s just something about late autumn afternoons that seems to require tea. It’s such a lovely little ritual- the loose leaf Hediard that Maman and I got in Paris (and that Sweetheart replenishes from McNulty’s), the old copper kettle, with its real throaty whistle, the time and steep. Just a little honey for me, always.

Gone to Lebanon

My mama was in town all last week and we had a time. When we weren’t covered in paint or dust we were covered in flour and wine and good long hugs. Just as things should be. You’ll have to wait a minute for the before/after of all the projects we tackled… but first! I must tell about the Kitchen Garden Cooking School. This was the theoretical “excuse” of her visit, that she would come up and we would meet our dear old friends (a mother and daughter just as prone to nesting and cocktails as we, of course) and take a short class on Lebanese cooking. Glorious. The air was gilded, the kitchen was warm and bright, and the lions share of the ingredients came directly from the garden. Things I didn’t know about before: sumac (a deep red powder that lends a lemony sprinkle), pomegranate molasses (deep, dark, tart, sweet, the best new discovery since Maggi Seasoning, and available at Sahadi’s on Atlantic avenue), and, of course, how to make pitas from scratch:We left with full bellies and a packet of recipes- some that will become favorites, some that may never be attempted again- my favorite? Muhammara. This roasted red pepper dip is not only a total revelation of deliciousness, it’s made from ingredients that can simply lie in wait in the pantry, ready to ambush a blitzkrieg of unexpected dinner guests.

Muhammara

2 roasted red peppers (from the jar is just fine)
1 cup walnuts
½ cup fine bread crumbs, crackers or panko
1 T lemon juice
2 T pomegranate molasses
1 tsp dried Aleppo pepper or hot paprika
¼ tsp ground cumin
½ tsp salt
¼ tsp sugar
2 T olive oil

In a food processor, puree all of the ingredients except the olive oil until completely combined and creamy.  Add the olive oil in a thin stream.  Serve at room temperature. Marvel at the skill and ease with which you entertain.

(from Sheila McDuffie and the Kitchen Garden Cooking School)

 

ps. don’t all New Yorkers wish their kitchen felt like this? O! The Open Shelves! O! The TWO sinks! O me O my!