bad news brunch

Cute baby strikes again!

Cute baby (Aya, to the rest of the world) and her parents came over for brunch last Sunday and I had a very nice menu all planned out. And then they arrived and Mabel went a little nuts and I was so bewitched by Aya’s cuteness that I overcooked the fancy baked eggs.

I bought special ramekins to cook those damn eggs, and they ended up being practically hard boiled. D’oh!

caketastrophe!

Oh, boy. Let's begin at the beginning. My father-in-law was in town for work recently and came over to have dinner with Dan and me on Valentine's Day. In honor of the occasion and the holiday, I decided to make us all a chocolate cake. Nothing fussy, no fancy piping or heart-shaped cut-outs or sugary pink decorations. I envisioned something more homespun: two layers of cinnamon-spiced chocolate cake covered in a thick layer of chocolate frosting. I would serve the cake on my pretty scallop-edged plate. We would eat it with mugs of chai tea. It would be perfect.

And then I overfilled both cake pans and it all went to hell. Dear readers, don't overfill your cake pans. Let me be the cautionary tale.

I would hate for your apartment to fill up with smoke about two hours before your guest arrived. You might think the burning smell is coming from bits of old food at the bottom of your oven that you should have cleaned last week, but no, it's the damn cake.

I would hate to imagine you having to pull the pans of half-baked, still-oozy cake out of the oven, finding globs of burning batter at the bottom of the oven.

I know you'd probably want to wait for the oven to fully cool down before you cleaned up the burning mess. Really, I'd hate for you to reach into the hot oven and burn your wrist scraping up cake ash. And yell about it to no one in particular.

I'd hate for you to have to open all of the windows to air out your apartment, especially on a 20-degree day.

Once the oven has cooled off, you'd be smart to put the cakes back in to finish cooking. After you scrape off the batter that leaked over the sides of the pan, of course. Which I'd hate for you to have to do, chipping your nail polish and all.

And once the cakes are cooked through and slightly cool, I'd hate for you to try to unmold them in a hurry, leaving big chunks of cake sticking to the pan. The layers will be so uneven and have so many craters and cracks, there is no way they can be stacked on top of each other, even with the most skillful cutting and shaving with a serrated knife. I'd hate to see the look on your face when you realize this.
And I'd hate for you to start picking at the lopsided cakes in frustration, eating big pieces which make the layers look even more ragged. There is nothing worse than feeling gluttonous and like a failure. But at least the cake tastes good. A little too good...you keep eating it.

Chocolate frosting might save this fugly cake. You would be smart to make some and set it aside in the refrigerator to thicken up. But don't leave it in there for too long--I'd hate for it to harden and turn grainy, leading to further frustration and freak-outs. (Luckily, re-cooking it over a double-boiler will do the trick, leaving the frosting shiny and satiny-smooth.)

You may quickly realize that slapping frosting on a busted cake won't really save anything. And I'd hate to see you contemplate throwing both layers in the garbage.

No, you will not throw it away. Instead, you will serve it forth by cutting the cake in the kitchen where no one can see. You'll cut slices only from the center of the cake, making almost passable squares that no one will question. And you will take a bite and say, "This tastes exactly like a boxed Entenmann's cake. All that work for a boxed Entenmann's cake."

winners and losers

I am not one of those cooks who has a rotation of tried-and-true, company-tested recipes. Sometimes I'll re-run certain favorite dishes, but when I throw dinner parties, I tend to try out new things. Most of the time this works out really well, and sometimes it doesn't.

Take the Super Bowl for example. This year I took over hosting duties from my friend E, who normally has everyone over to his apartment to watch the game. Like most Super Bowl parties, it is basically an excuse to eat junky food, drink a lot of beer, and scream at the TV. I prefer doing these things while watching the Puppy Bowl, but that's just me.


Thinking about what would eat well with beer, I put together a snack-oriented menu with a few standbys (guacamole) and a few new recipes (meatball sliders, stout ice cream floats). Some ideas proved to be better than others.

Super Bowl 2010
Pickle pinwheels
Guacamole and tortilla chips
Candied bacon peanut mix
Salami, prosciutto, gouda, and crackers
Meatball sliders
Cocoa brownies
Stout ice cream floats

WINNERS
The pickle pinwheels were gone by half-time. Everyone eyes them skeptically and then finds themselves going back for seconds, thirds, sixths. They are scary good. As in, scary and good.

Meatball sliders. More on those later this week.

Cocoa brownies. Just stop whatever you're doing right now and make these. Seriously, leave work if you have to. And add some chopped pecans while you're at it.

I'd say the candied bacon peanuts were almost a win. I came up with the idea for this nut mix after several friends saw the recipe for candied bacon on my site the other week and asked me to make some for the Super Bowl. Now I know the Super Bowl is not the occasion to eat healthily, but I was grossed out by the idea of serving a plate of bacon strips as a snack. So I made the candied bacon according to the recipe, then crumbled it and toasted it in the oven with salted peanuts, plus extra cayenne, brown sugar, and black pepper. I was really pleased with the results--the nuts were spicy and sweet and the chunks of bacon added a chewy porkiness. Everyone ate a few handfuls, but not as rabidly as I expected. After the party was over, I still had several cups of bacon nuts on my hands. I call this one a draw.

LOSERS
Guacamole. Even under duress, you could not make me speak ill against my guacamole recipe, but I overdid it this time, which, shockingly, resulted in a loss. I blame it on the supermarkets which mark down the price of avocados around the Super Bowl, tempting people into buying not one or two, but five. Yes, I made a vat of guacamole and about half of it went uneaten. And it turned brown and I had to throw it away and I was very sad. Dan has also been munching on an uneaten bag of TOSTITOS® SCOOPS!® all week, which is not a good thing.

Stout ice cream floats. Now this was surprising to me. I had an idea to get a few types of chocolate and oatmeal stouts and serve them with ice cream at the end of the night. So Tracy Porter had just made his awesome touchdown and I jumped up and exclaimed, "Who wants a stout ice cream float?" And no one said yes. Some people averted their eyes! Only my friend Colin raised his hand (his fiancee had just cut him off so this was a sneaky way to keep drinking, I suppose). I made a chocolate stout and vanilla ice cream float for each of us. Even though I bought a whole tub of ice cream and three bottles of beer for this dessert. And we took a sip and I hated it. The bitterness of the stout was not pleasant, it was just...bitter. "This isn't what I thought it was going to taste like," I said in my whiniest voice. Colin politely finished his, but I could tell it was an effort.

Not all dishes will turn out the way you imagine. It's sad and sometimes embarrassing when your plans don't come together as spectacularly as you envisioned. We tend to get high hopes about this dip recipe or that roasted pork loin. Every untried recipe has the potential to be life-changing, to win you friends and admirers. But it's the rare dinner party that hits all the high notes, that is perfect from beginning to end. I know I haven't gotten there myself yet. But if you invite fun people and most of the food is really good--or at least edible--it's impossible to fail.

a pie for dad

My father's birthday is at the beginning of January. Dan and I don't usually spend New Year's Eve in Florida, so normally we send him gifts and a card by mail. But this year we were in town to celebrate, so naturally we had a little party with finger foods and festive banners and such.

My father and I are very alike. We are hard workers, enjoy birdwatching, have a serious affection for dogs, are graced with the exact same feet (only mine are slightly smaller, thankfully), and are generally big-hearted yet stubborn people. We also both love lemon meringue pie.

So instead of a birthday cake, I decided to make Dad a pie. First, I located a recipe online by someone whom I will not name (it rhymes with "Shmalton Schmown") that sounded promising. I made a tart-but-not-too-tart lemon filling, whipped egg whites into firm peaks, and baked the whole thing until it was golden and burnished on top. It chilled in the refrigerator overnight. I have to admit, I got a little excited.

But when I cut into the thing, the lemon filling pooled into yellow slop. The meringue broke free from the crust and floated around the center of the pie like a solitary island. Everyone averted their eyes. Luckily, I had made an extra chocolate pudding pie, which my Mom immediately started slicing up. Nothing to see here, folks! Back-up pies are always a good idea.

Nevertheless, Dad requested a slice of the lemon, so I cut him a wedge of crust and meringue and topped it with some of the filling. It slid around his plate, a soupy mess of a dessert. But he ate the whole slice with relish, proclaiming it delicious. Because that's what dads do.

thanksgiving by the skin of my teeth

'Twas the day before Thanksgiving and I was in such a good mood I could have skipped to the grocery store to pick up the turkey. After getting the bird and some flowers for the table, I walked the dog who we were dog-sitting. As we crunched through the leaves together I admired the colorful potted mums and squash lining peoples' stoops. I had my menu, I had everything I needed, and I was really looking forward to a full day of cooking in a quiet house.

Back at home, I pet the dog and ate a light breakfast. I set the table and arranged some flowers and greenery in my favorite vase. Feeling very Martha-ish, I topped each plate with ginkgo leaves foraged from the sidewalk. I put out votives, and polished glasses, and rubbed the spots off the silverware.


I rubbed salt all over the turkey, I made cranberry sauce and cranberry-lime syrup for cocktails, I baked sweet potatoes and mashed them with butter and maple syrup. I made pumpkin mousse and vanilla bean-flecked whipped cream. Everything was going so smoothly, almost too perfectly. And then I started to feel a little strange around two o'clock. My stomach gurgled and churned. I decided to take a break--I only had one more task on my list, making cauliflower soup--so it wouldn't be a big deal to watch a little TV, right? I curled up with the dog to watch some vintage Roseanne reruns. Waves of nausea passed through my body and I started to worry.

Feeling sick has become a part of my life, so I can't say this was totally shocking. I have colitis, a chronic auto-immune disease that affects the intestines. This is a food blog, so I'll spare you the details, but it sort of feels like having food poisoning. Colitis isn't triggered by stress, or food (although I went gluten-free for awhile), or anything specific. Medicine, like cortiosteroids, can help but there is no cure. It's not even clear how I got colitis in the first place. But I have it, and luckily, I've been feeling pretty good lately. Except the day before Thanksgiving (and my birthday), of course.

Dan came home that afternoon to find me wrapped in a blanket in the fetal position. "We can go out for Thanksgiving dinner," he said. "NO!" I said, clutching my stomach. I didn't care how sick I felt, we would not eat at some crappy diner on Thanksgiving. "Everything is done except for the turkey. And the stuffing, and the brussels sprouts. Uh, and the soup."

The doorbell rang and Dan ran down to retrieve an arrangement of sunflowers, sent by my mother-in-law. "Don't work too hard today," read the card. I laughed. And then I cried a little. Relegated to the couch, I decided to skip out on the family dinner at Tabla. I wanted to spend the last night of my twenty-eighth year eating fancy Indian food in a pretty restaurant. Instead, I picked at a bowl of rice, chugged Pepto, watched Notorious on HBO, and felt very sorry for myself. Luckily I was with someone who is very empathetic.

By Thanksgiving Day my nausea had passed but I was in so much physical pain I could hardly stand up straight, let alone get dressed or brush my hair. Happy birthday to me! Luckily, Dan, wonderful, sweet, ready-to-swing-into-action Dan, grabbed a spoon and started cooking. He rubbed the turkey with butter and herbs and we laughed at the pale, naked bird slipping around in the pan. Into the oven it went and soon the house was filled with the aroma of browning butter and rosemary. Text messages from friends started rolling in, asking how the cooking was going (argh), wishing me happy birthday. (Sorry for not responding, guys.)

I leaned over the kitchen counter and read him the stuffing recipe as he pulled out a pan and started browning some bacon. Wanting to be useful, I chopped an onion and a few sticks of celery. It felt good to lean into the knife, to focus on something else instead of my stomach. I found myself reaching for ingredients, bending down to grab an extra pan, snapping back into familiar pre-dinner action. I started to feel a little better. And the house started to feel and smell like Thanksgiving--like my grandmother's house before we sat down to dinner. I could make my own holiday too. Even by the skin of my teeth.

I washed my face and brushed my hair, put on a loose-fitting dress and some slippers. The doorbell rang and Dan's parents came up. Seeing them and the looks of concern on their faces immediately put me at ease. The turkey was almost done, the apartment was aglow with candles, and here was family. Everything would be okay, whether I had an appetite or not.

And you know what? It was okay. Better than okay, really. I handed out cranberry-lime-ginger beer cocktails and we settled in for the evening. The turkey was moist (and I didn't butcher it!). I made gravy without lumps. The sweet potatoes and roasted brussels sprouts were delicious. The cranberry sauce produced rave reviews. The stuffing was a little dry, but no one seemed to care. We skipped the cauliflower soup completely, but no one cared about that either. And everyone said that dessert--pumpkin mousse parfaits--was the perfect end note.

I only ate about a bite of everything, but that was okay. I did it. I cooked my first Thanksgiving and I was able to sit at the table with everyone, something I doubted I could do the day before. I said a silent prayer of thanks for that, but mostly, I am thankful for my husband, who jumps in to help without complaint and does the dishes. I'm thankful for my family and friends, whom simultaneously worry about me and cheer me on. I'm thankful for our little apartment and the bounty of food that always fills our table. And I'm thankful that I didn't burn the turkey!

All's well that ends well, even when I didn't think it would.


Thanksgiving 2009
Cranberry-lime sparklers
Foie gras with cornichon, homemade mustard, and crackers
Turkey and gravy
Mushroom-herb stuffins
Mashed sweet potatoes
Roasted brussels sprouts with bacon and lemon
Cranberry relish
Chai tea
Pumpkin mousse parfaits

a plea for thanksgiving help

Confession: this is my first time cooking Thanksgiving dinner. Ever.

I usually contribute a dish (or three) to family Thanksgivings and I've made my share of pumpkin pie. But I've never been responsible for the entire shebang. Cooking the whole bird? Nope.

Am I nervous? A little. I'll be cooking for Dan and his parents (visiting from Florida) at our house in Brooklyn. They are great people, and lovely in-laws, but I have a bit of an entertaining sore spot with them otherwise known as The Saga of the Lamb Chops.

The last time I made a proper sit-down dinner for them was over three years ago, and let's just say I was a little green. Long story short, dinner involved $100 worth of tiny lamb chops foolishly purchased from the neighborhood butcher. Extreme sticker shock. I had never spent $100 on ONE ITEM OF UNCOOKED FOOD in my life and probably never will again. "Don't overcook these," the butcher warned me in his thick Brooklyn accent. I nodded seriously and took home the little chops worth their weight in gold.

Back at home, I made a rosemary-white bean soup as a starter, and served the meat with salad and roasted onions. And we all cut into our lamb chops, which were, shall we say...pink. Blood started to pool on our plates. I felt a little faint.

Now, I don't mind a rare piece of meat. But someone (I won't name names) sent their dinner back to be recooked. Sent. It. Back. Trying to play it cool, I shakily collected everyone's chops, put them on a plate, and returned to the kitchen to stick them under the broiler, fretting about whose lamb chop was whose and whether anyone would be offended if they got a different one. It was horrible. Although funny in retrospect. And the soup wasn't half-bad.

I have made successful dinners for my in-laws since this disaster, but something about it still lingers in the back of my mind. Thanksgiving seems like the MOST important meal of the year to me and I dread screwing anything up. Like, God forbid, undercooking the turkey. Judy, Dan's mom, is a very good cook. The bar is high, people.

Did I mention that my birthday is on Thanksgiving Day this year? It is!

And so, dear readers, please give me your best advice as to how to tackle this beast of a holiday. What are your tricks, your secrets, your strategies to pulling it off? Mom, are you out there? Halp!

[Note to Judy and Larry: I'm totally joking about being freaked out! Well, sort of.]

sunday supper for three

Dan's father Larry is in New York for work this week so he joined us for dinner on Sunday. Usually Dan and I spend Sunday nights in our pajamas, eating dinner and watching a marathon of TV shows starting with 60 Minutes and ending with True Blood. So having company was a nice change of pace. We both wore normal clothes and actually ate at the dinner table. Classy!

We also had another guest, whom we are dog-sitting. (I must show his photo because I am like the proud mother of a newborn. Except he is not mine.)


I wanted to make a fresh and summery meal that didn't require the oven, which turns our apartment into a furnace. Although I still caught Larry mopping his brow. Embarrassing. When trying to figure out a menu, my mind kept wandering toward seafood recipes for some reason. I thought about making grilled shrimp skewers, or poached salmon with pesto, or a big bowl of steamed mussels with crusty bread. And then I thought about linguine with clams, an everyday sort of meal that Dan and I eat a lot, but somehow it sounded more appealing than any of my other ideas.

To give the pasta an extra something special, I made breadcrumbs with parmesan and chopped parsley—the perfect crunchy foil for the garlicky clam- and bacon-studded broth and slippery noodles. We easily polished off almost two pounds of clams that night. Paired with a salad full of crunchy summer vegetables and feta, it was a great Sunday dinner. And we still managed to get quite a bit of TV viewing in. Nothing keeps my father-in-law from watching True Blood. The man must get his weekly Sookie fix.

One sour note: the panna cotta I made for dessert didn't turn out the way I had hoped. The custard tasted more watery than creamy, even though it was infused with vanilla and made with heavy cream. And the gelatin formed a thick layer at the bottom of each serving, making a mess when I unmolded each one. On top of that, the white peach puree I made was more like applesauce than a silky dessert topping. Gag. So I ditched the peaches and quickly melted some chocolate and swirled it on top of the panna cottas, a last-minute attempt to make them more edible. It didn't really help. But no matter—we were too distracted by killer vampires, lusty Bible-thumpers, and heart-eating zombies (eek!) to care.


Sunday night dinner with Larry
Fried chickpeas
Linguine with clams, pancetta, and parsley
Arugula with radishes, cucumbers, sugar snap peas, and feta
Panna cotta

Linguine with clams, pancetta, and parsley
We eat this recipe, from Jamie Oliver, year-round, but I like it best in the summer. Maybe it reminds me of the beach?

1 lb. dried linguine pasta

olive oil
4 strips pancetta, sliced, thinly (or bacon)
1 large clove of garlic, finely chopped
1 dried red chili, crumbled (or 1/2 tsp. chile flakes)
1 1/2 lb. clams, cleaned to remove any sand
1 glass white wine
1 handful chopped parsley
salt and pepper

Cook your linguine in salted boiling water until al dente. Meanwhile, get a pan hot and add a couple of good lugs (tablespoons) of olive oil and the pancetta. Fry until golden, then add the garlic and chilies. Soften them slightly and add the clams. Stir, then add the white wine. Put a lid on the pan and cook for a further couple of minutes until all the clams have opened–discard any that remain closed. Remove from the heat and add the drained linguine. Stir in the parsley, correct the seasoning and serve with all the cooking juices. Top each serving with breadcrumbs.

Parmesan breadcrumbs
(Makes about 1 cup)
1 cup breadcrumbs
1/2 cup grated parmesan
1 handful flat-leaf parsley, minced
2 Tbsp. olive oil
salt and pepper, to taste

Combine all ingredients in a small pan. Over low heat, toast the breadcrumbs until slightly golden, about 2 minutes. Be sure to stir the mixture to prevent it from sticking and burning. Remove from the heat and let cool.

straw-baby shortcakes

Please excuse the pukey name, but aren't these the cutest mini strawberry shortcakes you've ever seen? I made them for our potluck a few weeks ago. I wish I could say I was clever and made them tiny on purpose, but I got a little mixed up as I tend to do when baking--producing bite-sized shortcakes instead of normal, biscuit-sized ones.

I didn't want to spend time rolling and cutting biscuits, so I made lightly sweetened drop biscuits from the Joy of Cooking. The recipe called for walnut-sized balls of dough, which seemed really small, and I wrongly assumed they would rise and spread out, becoming normal-sized biscuits.

I really wanted a large, traditional shortcake that could be split and half and filled with whipped cream and berries. I freaked out for a moment, thinking that my plan was foiled and people wouldn't want to eat a dessert so minuscule, but quickly reminded myself that people love tiny things. Chihuahuas, sliders, and newborn babies are all small and beloved.

So I packed up the shortcakes and the containers of cut-up strawberries and whipped cream and decided to wing it. When dessert time rolled around, I arranged the shortcakes on a big platter, then covered them with a layer of strawberries and dotted the whole thing with poufs of whipped cream.

And you know what--it was fine. The dish was pretty, even! Everyone helped themselves to a shortcake or two and some berries and cream and when you ate them all together it was a perfect little strawberry shortcake. Or straw-baby shortcake.

Straw-baby shortcakes
The biscuits are adapted from the Joy of Cooking's quick drop biscuits recipe.
(Serves 10 to 12 people)

For the shortcakes:
2 cups flour
2 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1 Tbsp. sugar
zest of one lemon (optional)
6 Tbsp. cold unsalted butter, cut into pieces
1 cup milk

For the strawberries:
2 pints strawberries, washed, hulled, and cut into quarters or halves, if the berries are small
1/4 cup sugar
3 Tbsp. chopped fresh mint (basil or tarragon would also be nice)
1/2 lemon, juiced

2 cups whipped cream

Make the biscuits: Preheat your oven to 450 degrees. In a large bowl, combine the dry ingredients and lemon zest. Add the butter and mix it into the flour, tossing the pieces with your fingers, coating and separating as you work. Do not allow the butter to melt or form a paste with the flour. Continue to cut in the butter until the largest pieces are the size of peas and the rest resemble breadcrumbs. Add the milk all at once. Mix the batter with a wooden spoon or rubber spatula until the dry ingredients are moistened. With a lightly floured hand, gather the dough into a ball and knead it gently against the sides and bottom of the bowl 5 to 10 times, turning and pressing any loose pieces into the dough each time until the adhere and the bowl is fairly clean. The batter should be moist and sticky but not smooth.

Use a teaspoon to form walnut-sized scoops of batter (or make them larger if you don't want mini biscuits), use another spoon to scrape the batter onto an ungreased baking sheet, spacing the biscuits about 1 1/2 inches apart. Bake until the biscuit bottoms are a deep golden brown, about 12 minutes.

To make the strawberries: combine all of the ingredients in a large bowl and refrigerate until ready to serve. To serve, place the biscuits on a large tray (or a few on individual plates) and top with berries and whipped cream. Serve immediately.

pay-offs

Sometimes, this dinner party thing...it's not so easy. Like when you've got three pots on the stove and it's an hour before six people arrive, and the lights in the living room keep flickering on and off and on and off. Until they go dead. You think about lighting 50 tea lights, but a dark, candlelit room might seem a bit creepy to everyone, especially those guests you don't really know all that well yet. So you drag out the stepstool and try to reach the overhead light, and curse all 5 foot 1 inches of yourself. Luckily, your helpful, slightly taller husband comes and switches out the dead light bulbs, just in time for you to rush back to the stove and rescue the potatoes from burning. That light fixture--it looks a little loose to you too, right? You start to imagine it crashing down on someone's head and the eventual lawsuit and the fact that you'd have to repay the injured party in meals. Lots of meals.

Deep breath.

And then your friends arrive, coming in from the cold, shrugging off their winter coats. Thoughtful people that they are, they're bearing wine, and homemade pumpkin ice cream, and (gluten-free!) chocolate cake, and a wedge of Humbolt Fog, your favorite cheese ever. And wine glasses are filled and passed around and thoughts of that damn wobbly light fixture start to fade. And dinner is fine. There's juicy chicken legs with crispy skin and no one cares that the potatoes are slightly burned. Everyone drinks a lot and has fun. Which is always good. So much so that they even offer to wash the dishes before they leave. Which is incredibly generous (thank you, Mark), but also a no-no. I mean...right? Absolutely not. So everyone heads home except for the last friend standing, and you linger until after midnight finishing up the wine and talking sleepily about the virtues of Mariah Carey until it is bedtime. And even though there is a scary amount of dirty dishes staring you down, you wash them smiling.

Sometimes it can seem like a marathon when you have people over, but there is always a pay-off in the end. The immediate pay-off of friendship rekindled or solidified, but sometimes thank-you notes the next day, and a copy of the New Yorker food issue waiting for you on your doorstop. Which motivates you to plan your next dinner party.


Hearty fall dinner for six
Bacon-wrapped dates
Sweet potato pancakes
Roasted chicken with potatoes and tomatoes
Braised red cabbage with apples and caraway seeds
Pumpkin ice cream
Chocolate cake with chocolate sauce


Braised red cabbage with apples and caraway seeds
I amped up the vinegar and honey in this recipe (from the Joy of Cooking) to make the cabbage even more tangy, but if you're timid about vinegar, start with 3 tablespoons and taste as you go.


4 slices bacon, sliced into 1/2 inch strips.
3 Tbsp. finely chopped onion
1 medium head red cabbage, quartered, cored, and thinly sliced
1 large Granny Smith apple, sliced into matchsticks
6 Tbsp. apple cider or red wine vinegar
3 Tbsp. honey
1 tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. caraway seeds

Heat a large, nonreactive skillet or Dutch oven over medium-low heat. Add the bacon and cook until it releases its fat and starts to brown. Add the onions and cook until translucent and slightly golden. Add cabbage, apple, vinegar, honey, salt, and caraway seeds; then cover pan and cook over medium-low heat for about an hour, stirring occasionally, until the cabbage is very soft but not falling apart, about an hour.


Roasted chicken legs with tomatoes and potatoes
This recipe, from Jamie's Dinners, could not be simpler. Like a lot of Jamie Oliver's dishes, you just chuck everything into a pan and roast until done. It's the combination of ingredients that's brilliant: the chicken gets crispy, the tomatoes form a delicious jammy sauce, the potatoes soak in the savory chicken juices, and the garlic roasts in its own skin, creating a delectable, spreadable paste.


6 chicken legs, thighs and drumsticks
2 large handfuls of new potatoes, sliced in half, length-wise
2 pints cherry tomatoes
10 cloves garlic, skins on
1 Tbsp. chili flakes
1 handful basil leaves
Olive oil
salt and pepper

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Season your chicken with salt and pepper and place the legs in two roasting pans. Add the potatoes, tomatoes, and garlic cloves dividing them equally between the two pans. Drizzle liberally with olive oil. Bake for about one hour, pull out the pans and stir the potatoes and tomatoes to keep them from sticking. Scatter the basil leaves on top and continue baking for another 20 to 30 minutes, or until the chicken skin is golden brown and crispy. Insert a knife into the thigh to check if the chicken juices run clear (a sign of doneness). Serve hot, on a large platter. Tell guests to squeeze the roasted garlic out of the husks and mix it with the potatoes. Amazingly delicious.

kitchen nightmares

Unfortunately, I am not referring to the TV show.

Rule #1,205 of throwing a dinner party: Only invite people you really, really like. That way, when your crappy little oven suddenly stops working and throws your entire roasting-based menu for a loop, they'll still stick around, cheer you on, and eat whatever you end up cobbling together.

Last week was the first official day of fall, and it's definitely here in our neck of the woods. The weather's more grey and rainy than crisp and autumnal, but I'm already craving apples and pumpkin and roasted pork. Things that typically get roasted or baked in an oven. Which inspired this menu:

Autumnal dinner:
Sparkling ginger cocktails
Assorted sliced apples and cheese
Roasted pork loin with mustard breadcrumbs and haricots verts
Roasted gremolata potatoes
Pumpkin custard

Sounds good, right? At around 5 PM on Saturday, I whipped up the pumpkin custard (so easy--I'll post the recipe later) into my preheated oven, thinking I was such a pro and so on top of things, making dessert a whole HOUR before everyone was supposed to come over.

Except the oven wasn't hot. Or even warm. And the oh-so-scary smell of gas was starting to fill the apartment. [Commence freaking out, Googling appliance repair shops, searching for the landlord downstairs, more freaking out.]

After cursing the oven, our apartment, the poor, blameless pork loins marinating in the fridge, my menu, and the lack of appliance repair-people who will come out on a Saturday night, Dan slapped me across the face (not really, he started playing Salt-N-Pepa and dancing around the apartment, which cheered me up) and I pulled myself together. Deep breath. Plan B. I considered throwing in the towel and ordering pizza, but that wouldn't give me anything worth writing about here. So I reached for the grill pans.

I can't say that grilling individual slices of potatoes (when I should have been cleaning myself up and putting on a decent shirt) was exactly fun, but it got the job done. The grill pan gave the potatoes some char as if I had roasted them, as the recipe called for. Before dinner, I just reheated the potatoes in the microwave and tossed them with the delicious gremolata marinade (see below for recipe) I had made earlier.

The pork tenderloin was a bit of a conundrum. The original recipe called for searing the meat in a pan on the stovetop, then roasting it in the oven for about thirty minutes. The tenderloins were fairly thick and I was afraid that grilling would burn the meat on the outside and leave it raw in the center. I had to figure out a faster way to cook them, so I sliced all three tenderloins down the center, length-wise, making them thin enough to cook evenly. This produced nine strips of meat, so I used both of my grill pans (which barely fit on my sad little stovetop) to cook them all at once. This, of course, produced so much smoke, mainly from the burning bits of garlic from the marinade, that I had to strategically position fans away from the kitchen to air out the room. I heard several people coughing in the living room, so I plied them with more wine.

Somehow, miraculously, my plan worked and the pork ended up being perfectly cooked. Nice char on the outside from the grill, and slightly pink and juicy on the inside. I followed the recipe and served the pork sliced on top of some blanched green beans and showered with mustard breadcrumbs. The smoke cleared and we all dug in. The pumpkin custard could not be saved, but the Chris Rock HBO special and copious amounts of dessert brought by my thoughtful, kind, non-judgmental friends helped.




Roasted pork loin with mustard breadcrumbs and haricots verts
Adapted from Sunday Suppers at Lucques by Suzanne Goin. The original recipe calls for spring onions with the haricot verts but I skipped them. This recipe looked much more labor-intensive than anything I've made lately. But the Interwebs have been all a-twitter about how good it is, and I really enjoyed eating at A.O.C., one of Suzanne Goin's restaurants in LA, so I figured I'd give it a shot. And really, it wasn't so complicated--even without an oven. It's just steps, people. You make a few simple mini recipes, then put all the components together to make one impressive dish.
(Serves 6 to 8 people)

For the pork marinade:
1/4 cup Dijon mustard
1 Tbsp. thyme, plus 3 whole sprigs
2 Tbsp. chopped parsley
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
10 cloves garlic, smashed

For the roasted pork:
3 lbs. pork loin, center cut
6 Tbsp. unsalted butter
2 sprigs rosemary, broken into 3-inch pieces
10 sage leaves, plus 3 sprigs
kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

For the haricots verts:
1 1/2 lbs. haricots verts, topped but not tailed
2 Tbsp. olive oil
2 tsp. thyme
2 tablespoon unsalted butter
10 small sage leaves
kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

For the mustard breadcrumbs:
1 cup breadcrumbs
2 Tbsp. unsalted butter
1 tsp. Dijon mustard
1 tsp. thyme
1 tsp. chopped parsley

Marinate the pork:
Whisk together the mustard, parsley, thyme, and 2 Tbsp. olive oil in a shallow baking dish. Stir in the garlic and slather the pork with the mustard mixture. Cover and refrigerate at least 4 hours or overnight.

While the pork is marinating, make the breadcrumbs:
Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Place the breadcrumbs in a medium bowl. Heat a small sauté pan over medium heat for 1 minute. Add the butter and when it foams, whisk in the mustard, thyme, and parsley. Remove from heat, let the mixture cool a few minutes, then toss with the breadcrumbs, coating them well. Transfer the breadcrumbs to a baking sheet (or in a toaster oven) and toast them for 10-12 minutes, until they're golden brown and crispy. Set aside.

Roast the pork:
Take the pork out of the refrigerator one hour before cooking to bring it to room temperature. After 30 minutes, season the pork generously with salt and freshly ground black pepper.

Preheat your oven to 325 degrees. Heat a large sauté pan over high heat for 3 minutes. Add 2 Tbsp. olive oil and wait a minute or two, until the pan is very hot and almost smoking. Place the pork loin in the pan and sear it on all sides until well-browned and caramelized.

Transfer the pork loin to a roasting rack. Slice the butter and place it on top of the pork. Arrange the rosemary, sage, and thyme sprigs on top. Roast the pork, basting often with the melted butter, herbs, and natural juices, 45 minutes to an hour, until a thermometer inserted into the center reads 130°F to 135°F. Remove the pork from the oven and rest at least 10 minutes.

As the pork is roasting, make your beans:
Blanch the haricots verts in a large pot of salted boiling water 2-3 minutes until tender, but still al dente. Heat a large sauté pan over medium high heat for 2 minutes. Swirl in 2 Tbsp. olive oil, 2 tsp. thyme, and the haricots verts. Season with salt and freshly ground black pepper. Cook 3-4 minutes, stirring to combine and then add the butter and sage leaves. Cook a few more minutes, tossing to glaze the beans. Taste for seasoning and cover until serving so they stay warm.

How to serve it forth:
Arrange the haricots verts on a large warm platter. Thinly slice the pork about 1/4 inch thick (a serrated knife helps with this) and layer it it over the beans. Spoon some of the juices and herbs over the meat and sprinkle the mustard breadcrumbs over the top. Ta da!

Roasted gremolata potatoes
I was just going to roast some potatoes with rosemary, salt, and olive oil, but I am so glad I found this recipe instead. Adapted from Zoe restaurant via Luisa, the lovely and talented Wednesday Chef, the addition of parsley, citrus zest, thyme, garlic, and red pepper flakes elevates roasted rosemary potatoes to a whole other fragrant, savory, utterly delicious level. You could probably spread that marinade over an old shoe and it would taste divine.
(Serves 4 people, I doubled it to serve 8)

1/3 cup olive oil
2 tablespoons coarsely chopped flat-leaf parsley
1/2 teaspoon chopped fresh thyme
1 teaspoon chopped fresh rosemary
2 teaspoons finely grated lemon zest
1/2 teaspoon finely grated orange zest
1/2 teaspoon minced garlic
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes
5 medium Yukon gold potatoes (about 1 1/4 pounds), rinsed and dried
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste.

Whisk together the olive oil, parsley, thyme, rosemary, zests, garlic and red pepper. Set aside for at least a half hour.

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. (Or heat up your grill pan and grill each individual slice. On second thought, don't bother.) Cut each potato into 6 to 8 wedges. Toss the potatoes with the gremolata, and add salt to taste. Spread the wedges out on a rimmed baking sheet, and bake for 20 minutes. Pull out the sheet, flip the potatoes with a spatula, and then continue roasting them for another 20 to 25 minutes. Serve hot.