raspberry-ricotta cake

When I've gone too long without baking something, my inner baker throws a tantrum.  Her apron is dusted with flour and her hair is splattered with egg whites, and she is a tough, exacting boss.  Every ingredient must be carefully measured, and she will screech if a pan stays in the oven a minute too long.  My inner chef, meanwhile, is more forgiving of my erstwhile resistance to use exact measurements, and doesn’t curse if I forget a saucepan on the back burner (she calls this “testing the limits of the Maillard Reaction”).  The chef has a louder voice, particularly lately, and she's very persuasive when it comes to the season’s delightful, meaty artichokes that we’ve been steaming and eating plain with just a dab of melted butter or mayonnaise.

corn, bacon, and clam stew

In New England, tomato-clam business like what you see above is generally regarded as evil as Voldemort on a bad day.  A cream base is the only acceptable foundation for clam chowder, and even then, there are rules: no strange additions (like peppers or, ahem, corn).  But a love of fresh summer corn brings strange bedfellows, which is how it ended up here, in this pot full of late-summer bounty. 

There are some things that will forever reveal my Midwestern heart, and a fierce, enduring love of sweet corn is one of them.  Growing up in Wisconsin, a highlight of each year was the annual corn festival, where I got a box of freshly-steamed ears, trucked in from the field where they were picked that same morning.  Mouth watering, I watched as my ears were yanked off of the conveyor belt and onto giant blocks of Wisconsin butter, where strong hands twisted them until they shone slick in the August sun.  Salt shakers dangled from clotheslines, and I'd carefully salt each ear, turning for an even sprinkling.  Perfect rows of fat yellow kernels would pop as you bit into them, tasting of the sun that grew them.

amaranth greens, two ways

Only one of the two furry visitors currently in my apartment has been invited.  I'll let you guess which one: there is the mouse who lives under the radiator, and there is the adorable bunny who spent part of this morning eating kale stems out of my hand and tolerating a rub on his soft nose.

The bunny's name is Bunny (he came to us already named, ok?) and he will eat any vegetable except zucchini and snow peas.  Contrary to everything I learned about rabbits from cartoons, Bunny seems to prefer leafy greens over carrots, but he's not super picky, which makes him the perfect way to dispose of leftover vegetables.  Weird spot on your cucumber?  Bought too much tarragon with no plan for using it?  Kale ribs too tough to eat?  Feed 'em to Bunny.

This must be why people call salads "rabbit food."  (Though I try to spread the gospel of how crazy delicious salads can be with some salt and fat in the mix, which is why I was thrilled when I heard about a donut salad—but alas, the salad calls for "donut peaches," not actual donuts.  Way to get a girl's hopes up.)

zucchini and chickpeas with boursin

4.19.2013
It was the first day in a long time when the sunlight didn't wake me.  Most mornings, our bedroom lightens shade by rosy shade, as dawn's fingers steal around the corners of the curtains.  I'll doze through familiar noises as they come into focus: birds chirping from their twiggy nest in our gutter, the clunk of the old red teapot as one of my roommates heaves it, full of water, onto one of the burners.

Instead, Merrick woke me.  I recognized all of his words individually, like you might pick faces out of a crowd, but I couldn't understand the sum of their parts.  How many shots were fired?  Where are they now?  What he said went something like this: the bombers stole a car and are somewhere in the city, and we're all supposed to stay at home today and I just remember asking back, what? what?  Shaking the fuzz out of my ears as if sleep were the reason I couldn't understand, but no, it was just incomprehensible.

orecchiette with mint pesto, peas, and ricotta

If, for some reason, I started a list of "most adorable foodstuffs," orecchiette would be near the top.  They would place right above kiwiberries (kiwis about the size of a grape tomato, squee) and behind any cake frosted to look like an animal (particularly a monkey).  Orecchiette means "little ears" in Italian, because of its vaguely ear-like shape.  This utterly darling moniker gives it the clear edge over, say, the kumquat—sorry, kumquat, I'm digging your tiny fruit vibe (see above re: kiwiberries), but if you want to win this thing, try to put more effort in your name, 'm kay?

While orecchiette are objectively adorable, I have to admit that I don't love them—they lose points because of their tendency to stick together, forming a massive pasta clump so large that I worry it may someday grow a brain and overtake the earth and we will have to worship clumpy pasta overlords.  My husband, though, loves these little ears specifically because of that glomming effect, which is an easy way to just mainline straight starch.  Incidentally, if anyone can recommend a tried-and-true nonstick method, please share, because my household has a real problem with starch comas.  (And don't suggest "just don't eat the clumps" because, for real, there would be mutiny.)

black soybean bowl with brown rice and quick-pickled vegetables

I suspect that by now, many of you are in a new place where you're going to stay for a day or two, perhaps for even longer.  Maybe there is an evergreen to dress up all sparkly, and some little ones running around underfoot.  Maybe there are some gifts yet to be wrapped (or all of them, in my case).  And almost definitely there are cookies to be eaten, or eggnog to be drunk, or gingerbread homes to be nibbled piece by piece until the little gingerpeople are totally homeless and then there's nothing to do but to eat them, too.

Or maybe, all of the above.  This is the time of year when I revel in excess, pouring a second or third glass of eggnog with a breezy cry of "tis the season!"  I don't ever count calories, but at some point my body just hits a wall and I have to dial it back—or, I slip into an eggnog-induced coma.  Whichever comes first.  (Usually, it's the coma.)

mashed potato pancakes

If ever I had foreseen, during the 2.5 years this blog has been in existence, that I would be writing a recipe with a mere TWO ingredients (and for Thanksgiving, no less), I think I might have quit on the spot.  This is the future of food writing?  There is no need to go on.

Well.  This recipe isn't exactly for Thanksgiving; it's for those lazy days afterwards when you've eaten too much and walked too little, and your fridge is crowded with leftovers that are perfectly fine on their own, but why not spruce things up a little?  I learned the magic of doctoring leftovers a few years ago, when I went down to Jersey to spend Thanksgiving with a friend who had just gotten back from two years in the Peace Corps—lucky her, living in Kazakhstan right when Borat became a thing.  Most of her family had come to Jersey to welcome her back, and we all sat down to Thanksgiving dinner that had been cooked on a hotel stove with only a couple of pots, one pan, and a colander.  It was delightful.

For some reason, during that dinner I learned the Russian word for pancake (blin—pronounced 'bleen'), which was totally appropriate for two reasons:

First, because in Russian, 'blin' can be shouted as an expression of dismay, as in 'darn!' or 'dagnabit!'
This was done several hundred times during some rousing games of Apples to Apples.

pumpkin cupcakes with cream cheese icing

Most people have a spare pumpkin sitting around at this time of year, and I've got two.  I never got around to carving a greeting for the hordes of trick-or-treaters who rang our bell this year, from the itty-bitty bumblebee to the six power rangers.  (Does that mean power rangers are cool again?  I'm still recovering from when they were cool the first time.)

I love cooking with pumpkins, but it's a bit of a pain to hack them up and scoop the seeds out.  Luckily, I used to have a steady source for pre-hacked-up, pre-seeded pumpkins: every year, my former landlady (hi, Amy!) would very neatly carve a pumpkin on the morning of Halloween, leave it out for the day, and ask me to dispose of it in the evening.  No problem.  I disposed of them right in my oven.

foolproof roast chicken

Since I just spent a whole post talking about how vegetables are the next cool crowd, I should probably explain that this roast chicken post is not a retraction of that thought--it's just a byproduct of my stubbornness.  I am a stubborn person, and right now I am stubbornly refusing to turn on the heat, be it 64 or 61 or even an obscene 59 degrees in my apartment, because it's October and too early to turn on the heat.  NO.  I will NOT.  But this means that sometimes, the only comfortable place to be is in the kitchen with the oven on full blast.  It's been working out so far.  Plum and flax seed muffins?  Check.  Roasted butternut squash?  Check.  Foolproof roast chicken?  Double check.

This recipe has two ingredients: chicken, and salt.  That's what makes it foolproof.  There's no futzing around with lemon, no rosemary, not even black pepper--those things are scrumptious and I have nothing against them, but the secret to this chicken is that it doesn't need them.  Truly.  It stands on its own, both in deliciousness and in ease.

cardamom milk tea

As one of six people remaining in this country who have not seen a single episode of Breaking Bad, I was completely oblivious to the fact that I have been sitting on fame and fortune this whole time.  Literally sitting.  Apparently, Walter White owns the same couch and chair set that I have in my living room.

Up until I was alerted to this fact, my closest brush with fame was at four years old, when I took first place in a coloring contest.  My "cow in shades of green and purple" was like something straight out of Picasso's sketchbook.  (The prize?  Coupons for ice cream, which to a four-year-old is seriously the best prize ever.)  Anyway, sitting on these couches makes me feel famous by osmosis, like if I saw Julia Roberts getting into a taxi or something: it's nothing to actually brag about, but I still totally would because it makes me feel important.

My apartment mates and I had a discussion about selling our famous furniture as collector's items, until Heidi pointed out that we can't list "Breaking Bad Furniture" on Craigslist because who would click on an ad for some furniture that is bad and breaking?  Fair point, well made.  Also: then we would have to sit on the floor, and the dust bunnies around here can be rabid.

italian-style grilled eggplant "sausages"

You guys, it's okay to eat vegetables again.  Or, rather, it's cool to eat vegetables again. Bon Appetit’s August issue lauded chefs who are "celebrating produce with a reverence formerly reserved for Wagyu beef." Down the newsstand, Food & Wine featured a glowing vegetable-centric article, while its editor-in-chief proclaimed vegetables to be "the new pork, the new cupcake, and the new craft beer all in one.”

If Food & Wine is, like, Vogue for foodies, this means that vegetables are about to become your over-the-top, hipster-friendly imperative—sort of like the edible version of the skinny jean. If you've already been diligently eating your vegetables and enjoying them, like some sort of mouthbreathing weirdo, good news! you're now a trendy weirdo. Because in the same way that pork, cupcakes, and craft beer have all had their fifteen minutes on menus and in specialty stores, here comes the year of the vegetable.

eatable Montreal

Here is one thing we learned in Montreal: a four-croissant-a-day diet is unsustainable.

Or, rather—I learned this, and Merrick did not.

Reporting for writing assignments sometimes takes the form of eating (Cases in point), which is possibly the best form of homework ever.  My latest article in The Boston Globe, about the best places to find croissants in Montreal, took some serious scouting.  And some serious eating.  And some serious butter.

I'm definitely not complaining—I love me some butter.  If I lived in Montreal, I would buy so many croissants every week that I could roll on piles of them like Scrooge McDuck.  But my point is that I saw the amount of butter that goes into these things, and it is only slightly less than the amount of dough involved.  I saw a block of butter equivalent to a mid-size ice sculpture.  I thought it was white chocolate, but then I asked what they use all that white chocolate for, and the very nice pastry chef looked over with a duh expression.  So, that's another thing that I learned—butter does occasionally come in blocks the size of a small Toyota.

basil vinaigrette

A couple of times over the past few months, I've glanced down at my thumbs, hoping they would have turned a deep emerald.  Or at least a nice olive green.  But, as the sorry state of my potted herbs will confess, I am not an instinctual gardener.

Here's the story.  This year I grew some fresh herbs out on the front deck.*  I lovingly potted them in soil, imagining fresh basil pesto, tabbouleh with parsley, and summery potato salad made with thyme.  Now I look back on my two-months-ago self and think—don't waste your time!  (Puns! Groan.)  These herbs were doomed the second they met me.  The parsley bolted (that's a thing, right? bolting?), the rosemary got all thin and spindly, and the rest of them wilted within inches of their lives.  Except the mint, which is totally dead.

(Merrick is kind enough to blame my wilting herbs on the crazy summer heat we've been having.  Have I mentioned the heat wave?  There is a short list of things that I am SO. OVER., and "heat wave" recently moved into the number-one spot, beating out "the copy machine at work" and "accidentally poking myself in the eye with the arm of the cat-eye sunglasses that I bought to look cool in the heat wave.")

sesame cucumber salad

I know it's summer because multiple TSA agents asked to pat down my huge, frizzy hair.  Oof da.  Ninety-percent humidity is not my friend.  In search of a reprieve from the heat wave that's been clutching this part of the country, we made the short trip out to Walden Pond yesterday, and the water was perfect: cool enough to be refreshing, but without that bone-chilling cold that's a signature of our northern Atlantic ocean beaches.

Shiki: Authentic Flavors of Japan

Sushi for the discerning, and much, much more

Brookline offers plenty of sushi, from everyday spots perfect for a nice bit of maki, to express joints smelling like greasy tempura, to supermarkets selling pre-packaged boxes of the stuff. You might think there's no reason to visit another sushi joint.

But Shiki, if you let it, will give you a hundred different reasons. To start, there's much more here than sushi: the menu offers dozens of small plates and noodle dishes that sparkle with the flavors and textures of meticulous and distinctive Japanese cooking.

caramelized fennel

I'll be the first to admit that fennel is an intimidating vegetable.  A dense knot of layers with a good ten inches of greenery fuzzing about like a Mardi-Gras headdress?  (Being from the Midwest, I like my vegetables homely and unassuming, thank you very much.)  All that pageantry, and then you discover that fennel just tastes like black licorice.  Um, no thank you.  Until this spring, fennel was brooding down at the very bottom of my list of favorite vegetables, right next to—well, to be honest, there was nothing next to it.  I thought there was nothing quite so bad as fennel.

chickpea soup

Every once in a while I see a recipe that makes me drop everything to buy ingredients and make it immediately.  I'm sure some of you can relate to this—flipping through a magazine or cookbook with pretty, pretty pictures, hearing the siren song of some delicious braised this or sauteed that, and heading straightaway into the kitchen like a cook possessed.  For me, this is especially true when those pictures contain one of the following: crispy potatoes, oozy caramel, butternut squash, or melted cheese, melted cheese, melted cheese.

 Then occasionally, I'll feel the call of a recipe that I just can't explain, which is what randomly happened with this chickpea soup.  What?  A soup the color of that cakey, sedentary cave mud from the last time I went spelunking?  From the Bon Appétit issue featuring the most annoying interview ever?  An entirely healthy pot of virtuous nutrition?  Yes. That one.  I want to make that and eat it RIGHT NOW.

rosemary sea salt truffles

aaaaaaaand... I'm back.

Since this is, actually, a blog about food, and seeing as how I have remained woefully silent during the two most important months in a gourmande's year (gravy month and gingerbread month, I like to call them), it's high time for me to prove my continuing legitimacy as a cook.  My time has been vacuumed up by other writing—so much writing—but lest you think I've been silent because I haven't been cooking, let me assuage your fears.  This has been an inspired time for culinary experimentation, and in some cases I've been so far out on a limb that it's a wonder I didn't come crashing to the ground.  Much of the R&D in soup and chicken will show up here, in one form or another.

But I'll tease no further.  Let's get down to business with some truffles.  Sure, for my first recipe back, I could have gone with a banana-kale-nutritional yeast smoothie or some such nonsense, to help you keep your New Year's resolution.  But I'm more of a devil-on-your-shoulder kind of girl.  I'd never advise a vegetable smoothie when there are truffles to be had.  (If you're one of the veg-faithful, I'll be accepting your carrot-fueled snarky comments at the end of this post.)

gammy's baked apples

I am one who is given to excess, particularly where apple-picking is concerned.  Twenty pounds is near on half a bushel, which is just a charming way of saying too much!  More than you need!  But the thing is, twenty pounds never sounds like too much, not to me, especially when one is caught up in the crisp autumn air and the sunshine that makes the day just right and the perfectest apple-cider doughnuts you've ever tasted—the first bite crunches from a shell of cinnamon sugar and the insides are pillowy, light as air.  They taste best right out of the paper bag, still hot from the fryer, while standing in the orchard.  But be warned, because they may induce doughnut-fueled apple frenzy, symptoms of which include delusions that one can totally use half a bushel of apples, so let's go ahead and get picking!

The moral of the story is this: I need ways to use twenty pounds of apples.

Sorry to get your hopes up—this post is not about those doughnuts (although sometimes I wish it were.  Curse you, stuff of my dreams!).  No, this post is much more sensible, the kind of thing you can do when you've gnawed the last apple you could possibly gnaw, and yet an invincible mountain of Granny Smiths and Macintoshes still stares at you with apple eyes full of accusations.  (What? They do.)

I've always been skeptical of baked apples.  They seem like a fake dessert, like a health food in disguise at a masquerade dessert ball.  It's as though they come from a different life, a world away: you might imagine them as a sweet from the French countryside, where your itty-bitty white-haired grandmother would hand you one, soft and still warm, and you'd munch through the syrupy mess of apple, brown sugar and butter while running off to play kick-the-can or freeze tag with flushed cheeks and sticky fingers.  Whose life is that?  I have way too many bad hair days to be that perfect.

Well, to be fair, one part of that flight of fancy is mine—lucky me!  I married into a family with an itty-bitty, white-haired French grandmother.  And these are her dessert; or, at least, they're her idea, one that Merrick wanted to try so badly that he actually made them himself, unprompted and I thought, 'here's my own October surprise!'  And actually, it was a double surprise, because the apples turned out to be simple, not overly sweet, and just right.

The Washington Square Tavern: Beer, Burgers, and Banter

A visit to The Washington Square Tavern is an evening for good beer, good burgers, and good banter.  It’s like going to a party at the cool kids' place—you know the ones, who ironically wear tweed jackets and stock their bookshelves with Kerouac and Vonnegut.

Here at the Tavern, the décor is an homage to a passion for books and for biking, in the form of low, dark wood bookshelves and black-and-white photos of the Tour de France. There's a jovial feel in the air, cultivated by Gerry, the owner, who greets the regulars by name. A dining companion remarked that "all the faces look familiar—I feel like I know everybody here."

Read the rest of this review at the Brookline Patch...