link-o-rama

Tomato season is almost over and I am looking for any excuse to buy and eat them. I've been slicing them into salads with watermelon and feta, roasting them for pasta sauces, layering them on pizzas.

One of my friends who shall remain nameless (Oh, okay. His name is Colin. Colin P. Delaney. He lives in Greenpoint.) says he's been eating a whole tomato with olive oil, salt, and pepper for breakfast in the morning. Even as a fellow tomato-lover this strikes me as being a little insane. But who am I to judge?

Here are some tomato-centric links to inspire Colin and the rest of us:

The "best" BLT (with tomatoes, burrata, and crispy pancetta) [via Bon Appetit's Project Recipe]

A simple salad with fresh corn and basil [via Lottie & Doof]

Creamy heirloom tomato soup (with grilled cheese...mmm) [via Bella Eats]

Smitten Kitchen uses tomatoes in a cornbread salad, a clever twist on panzanella. [via Smitten Kitchen]

If you're lucky enough to get your hands on Green Zebra tomatoes, an heirloom variety, here's a recipe for a Green Zebra gazpacho (I'm sure it would work well with unripe red tomatoes or regular beefsteaks, too.) [via Food & Wine]

a lazy (and delicious) alternative to pancakes

I love a stack of pancakes for brunch but they are not the easiest thing to make for a crowd. Between flipping the pancakes, keeping them warm, and making sure you have enough to feed everyone, I find the whole process kind of stressful, especially first thing in the morning. And don't even get me started on waffles. Breakfast at home shouldn't require a separate appliance.

When making brunch for myself and Dan last weekend, I think I found a solution: the Dutch baby. It's like a cross between a pancake and a crepe, with puffed golden pockets and crispy, buttery edges. To make it, you mix up a quick batter and pour it into an overproof pan (cast-iron skillets work great for this) then bake for about 15 minutes. The Dutch baby emerges from the oven puffed and golden. All you have to do is slice it up and serve--no flipping required. Served up with some brunch-y sides, it makes a perfect centerpiece. Or, you could make several Dutch babies at the same time if you're hosting brunch for a few people.

To gild the lily, I had some plums that were starting to go soft, so I cut them up and placed them in the batter after I poured it into the pan. Wanting a little more texture, I sprinkled a handful of sliced almonds on top as well. The end result was deliciously jammy with a nice crunch from the toasted almonds.

The only problem is the name, which Dan hates, and refuses to say. I have to agree...who wants to eat a baby? I'm sure there's a good story behind the name, which I can't seem to find. Can anyone out there help me out? When I Googled "Dutch baby name" all I got was Ared, Klaas, Marieke, and Joost. Maybe I'll just call it a puffy pancake next time?

Plum Dutch baby
Adapted from the Joy of Cooking. You can easily omit the almonds and substitute any fruit you have on hand. I think berries, apples, peaches, pears, or even bananas would work just as well.
(Serves 2 to 4)

4 Tbsp. butter
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup sugar
2 large eggs, at room temperature
6 small plums, quartered and pitted (Or 1 large plum)
1/3 cup sliced almonds
powdered sugar, for dusting

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Whisk together the milk, flour, sugar, and eggs until smooth. In a 10-inch ovenproof skillet (cast iron is ideal), melt the butter over medium heat. Tilt the pan so that the butter coats the sides. Pour the egg mixture into the skillet and cook, without stirring, for 1 minute. Place the plum slices in the batter, distributing them evenly throughout the skillet. Sprinkle the almonds on top. Place the skillet in the oven and bake until the pancake is puffed and golden, 12 to 15 minutes. Sprinkle with powdered sugar and serve immediately, for the pancake loses its puff, and therefore its drama, almost immediately. (I love that line.)

what's for dinner, melissa clark?

I discovered food writer Melissa Clark through A Good Appetite, her weekly column in The New York Times dining section. Here, she concocts things to eat and drink based on what's in season, random cravings, inspiration from friends and family, or whatever's hanging out in her fridge. Like us home cooks, she tends to add a little of this, a little of that, and taste as she goes, producing recipes that are developed and written in a charmingly meandering way. In addition to writing for the Times, she's contributed articles to publications including Food & Wine and Bon Appetit and has written 18 cookbooks, among them Braise, a collection of recipes with chef Daniel Boulud and The Modern Vegetarian Kitchen, which received a James Beard award and Julia Child Cookbook award. Her next book, Adventures of A Good Appetite, which is based on her Times column, will be out next year. I, for one, can't wait to read it.

1. Name, occupation, and city
Melissa Clark, food writer, NYC

2. When was the last time you threw a dinner party, and who was invited?

July 13th, we had four friends over for grilled steak and we ate in the garden, covered in mosquito repellent but enjoying the fresh air nonetheless.

3. What is the best menu you've ever made for company?

Smoked salmon blinis, champagne, pomegranate roasted quail, farro salad, baked Alaska for dessert with homemade pistachio ice cream.


4. What's your preference: wine, beer, cocktails?
All of the above.

5. What's your favorite dinner party soundtrack?

My husband is in change of music, but I like big band music for dinner parties.


6. Some friends are coming over for a last-minute dinner tomorrow night. What do you make?
Grilled clams with lemon-cayenne garlic butter, my current obsession, served with homemade flatbread and a big salad with tiny green beans and cherry tomatoes. Almond gelato for dessert.


7. Do you usually cook everything yourself, or do you have help? Usually I cook and my husband chops.


8. Do you ever buy store-bought food, or is everything on your table made from scratch?
Usually most things are homemade but I don't mind buying stuff as long as it's high quality.


9. What do you like to serve for dessert? Homemade pie is the best when I can manage it. No one turns it down, there's always room for pie.


10. If you could invite anyone over for dinner (living or dead), who would it be?

Sally Hemings

[Photo: Courtesy of Melissa Clark]

chocolate-chip banana bread

Chocolate-chip banana bread. What more do you need to say?

Having a surplus of overripe bananas in the freezer (a funny thing happens when you leave bananas in a hot apartment) I was overdue to bake a loaf of banana bread. So when our Governor's Island picnic rolled around, I figured that was a good excuse to turn on the oven and free up some freezer space.

I'd been hearing good things across the blogosphere about an incredibly delicious chocolate-ginger banana bread from Molly Wizenberg's A Handmade Life. I still haven't read the book, but I'm a huge fan of her blog and it's high on my long "to-read" list.

Like pizza, ice cream, and a lot of other hard-to-screw-up foods, banana bread is usually pretty good in my book. But this bread totally lived up to the hype. Molly's version is properly buttery and perfectly dense, but the addition of chocolate and extra moisture from plain yogurt put it over the top. We ate about half of the loaf at the picnic and I have steadily been making progress on the rest. It's ideal for pre-and post-gym snacks, mid-day nibbling, emotional eating, late-night dessert cravings, and any other excuse you might make to eat it.

Chocolate-chip banana bread
Molly's recipe (via Wednesday Chef) calls for crystallized ginger, but I didn't have any and didn't want to buy a whole container. If you'd like banana bread with little bits of spice, Molly recommends adding 1/3 cup finely chopped crystallized ginger at the same time as the chocolate chips.
(Makes 1 loaf)

6 Tbsp. unsalted butter
2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
3/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips
2 large eggs
3 large ripe bananas, mashed (I used 4 bananas)
1/4 cup well-stirred whole-milk plain yogurt (not low or nonfat)
1 tsp. vanilla extract (I used the seeds from 1/2 a vanilla bean)

Set a rack in the center of the oven, and preheat to 350 degrees. Grease a 9- by 5-inch loaf pan or an 8-inch round cake pan with cooking spray or butter. Melt the butter on the stove or in a microwave and set aside to cool slightly.

In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking soda, and salt. Add the chocolate chips (and crystallized ginger, if using) and whisk well to combine. Set aside. In a medium bowl, lightly beat the eggs with a fork. Add the mashed banana, yogurt, melted butter, and vanilla and stir to mix well. Pour the banana mixture into the dry ingredients, and stir gently with a rubber spatula, scraping down the sides as needed, until just combined. Do not overmix. The batter with be thick and somewhat lumpy, just make sure all the flour has been incorporated. Scrape the batter into the loaf pan and smooth the top.

Bake into the loaf is a deep shade of golden brown and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, 50 mins to an hour. If the loaf seems to be browning too quickly, tent with foil. Cool the loaf in the pan on a wire rack for 5 minutes. Then tip out onto the rack, and let it cool completely before slicing. (The loaf freezes well wrapped in plastic wrap and again in foil to protect from freezer burn.)

a labor-free picnic

Fall is right behind us, I can almost feel it. The humidity has disappeared, the sun is going down a little earlier, the breeze is slightly cooler. It's been a fun, busy, jam-packed summer (with lots of dinners), but I dread packing up my flip flops.

Looking to soak up every last bit of the season and the sunshine, Dan and I joined our friends Colin and Anne for a trip to Governor's Island, a small land mass situated between Brooklyn and lower Manhattan. Dan and I went there for a picnic last summer, and had such a good time that we had to go back. The island's huge shade trees, old buildings, and lack of cars make you feel miles away from the city, even though you're just a 10-minute ferry ride away.

We found an empty picnic table overlooking the water and set out our bounty: cheese, baguettes, hummus, plums and figs, olives, prosciutto, and chocolate-chip banana bread. We wanted to keep things simple. When the view and company are so great, it doesn't matter so much what's for lunch. Although this was a pretty tasty lunch.

We ate and talked in the shade, swatted wasps, drank lemonade, watched the boats pass by. Living in a city and spending most days indoors makes me feel so happy just to be outside, especially on such a gloriously sunny day.

Another great thing about Governor's Island is there is a free, man-made beach complete with sand and a volleyball net. Not to mention a bar, where you can buy beers and French fries, which we did, duh.

A picnic is nothing groundbreaking, I know. Just put some food in a bag and eat it outside, right? Right. Simple as it was, this was one of those days I will remember when the weather finally does turn. When it's cold and gray and summer seems so far off, I'll remember sitting at a picnic table on an island, eating plums and feeling the sun on my face.

happy weekend

Apologies for the lack of posts this week, it's been a busy one. Have a great weekend and a fun Labor Day if you're in the U.S.! I'm planning on spending some much-needed time outdoors.

More posts to come next week.

Thanks, as always, for reading,
Lisa

cupcakes in the country

Last weekend, Dan and I found ourselves driving on Virginia's Pocahontas Parkway. We were lost, but not so lost that we were outright admitting it. Instead, we cursed our Google map, the pickup trucks bearing down on us, and the lack of visible road signs pointing out our destination, our friend Megan's wedding. The side of the road blurred green as we sped along, no signs, no stores, just a few houses spread out along the highway here and there. Our frustrations turned to the residents of whatever town we were passing through. What do people do here? How can you live way out here in the sticks? Where is the 24-hour Korean deli? Where can you get good cup of coffee? We felt about as far away from Brooklyn as we could get.

Fully accepting that we were lost, we eventually found a gas station and some helpful locals who told us to turn the car around and drive a short spell up a hill. We weren't that far away after all. We quickly thanked them and hopped back in the rental car. I didn't have time to ask them what they did for fun, as the wedding was about to start any minute. After a few harried turns down a winding residential road, we rounded a corner and came upon what appeared to be a county fair, and saw Megan walking down a hill on the arm of her father. At that point, we started running. Me, in heels, down a gravel path.

I've been to quite a few weddings, including my own. Each one is completely unique, a reflection of a couple, their taste, their faith (or lack of), and their families' expectations. There is also food, which is equally revealing. When Dan and I got married in South Florida, we wanted food that reflected the area and the Cuban restaurant where we re-met. There were mini Cuban sandwiches, marinated pork loin, and margaritas. Fried plantains and black beans and rice. Miniature Key lime pies and chocolate cupcakes. I took more care and interest in planning the menu than choosing my dress, or the flowers. In my eyes, my wedding was the biggest dinner party I had ever thrown. Even though I wasn't doing the cooking.

Megan and Butch's wedding was an old-fashioned hoe-down in a pasture, obviously inspired by the area. They hired a bluegrass band, set up a music station complete with jugs and washboards, and draped red, white, and blue banners around the fenced-in area. I sat on a bale of hay, which is something you don't see very often. Or, ever. Hence the photo.

Dinner was just as thoughtfully planned. A local restaurant made a Southern-style buffet of pulled pork sandwiches, chicken, macaroni and cheese, collard greens, and hush puppies. And, happily, a lot of barbecue sauce options. I love barbecue sauce. Everyone lined up and loaded down their plates, eating at picnic tables and homemade checkerboards as the sun went down. The food was very good--homey and filling, especially the mac and cheese. Eating outside with a plate on your lap always tends to make food taste better.

But my favorite part of the menu came later. On a long table, there were dozens of cupcakes made by Megan herself. There were so many that they filled the entire table, tray after tray of hand-frosted lemon and vanilla. How she found time to bake hundreds of cupcakes days before her wedding (and go canoeing, and introduce her parents to her in-laws, and set up a music-making station, and get her nails done, and probably remind Butch of a dozen odd things he had to do, the list goes on and on) is beyond me.

Megan is a great cook and baker, and the cupcakes were absolutely perfect--all soft, airy cake and sweet buttercream. I took my time eating one, not my usual way of eating cupcakes, but I wanted to really enjoy it. I wanted to savor it all, really. Being in the middle of nowhere, seeing my friend all dressed up and kicking her heels to the band, dancing under the stars with strangers and old friends.


Amy Sedaris' cupcakes
Megan said she used a recipe from Amy Sedaris, author of the awesome I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence. The story goes that Amy started selling cupcakes to pay for food and supplies for her rabbit, Tattletail. The cupcakes became so popular at New York City bakeries that she expanded into cupcake (and cheese ball) catering with Dusty Food Cupcakes, a company named after her second rabbit, Dusty. If you know anything about Amy Sedaris this won't sound strange at all. Some of the cupcakes were vanilla, others were lemon with bits of lemon zest in the frosting. To get the lemon flavor, I'd estimate using the juice of one lemon in the batter, reserve the zest for the frosting.
(Makes about 2 dozen...or 18, if you are Amy.)


For the cupcakes:
1 ½ sticks unsalted butter
1 ¾ cups sugar
2 large eggs
2 tsp. vanilla extract
½ tsp. salt
2 ½ tsp. baking powder
2 ½ cups of flour
1 ¼ cups of milk

Beat the butter and sugar, then add the other ingredients. Beat well, fill cups, and bake at 375 degrees for 18-20 minutes. You should get 24. I get 18, 'cause I'm doing something wrong.

Frosting:
1 stick unsalted butter
1 box Domino confectionary sugar
¼ cup half-and-half
1 tsp. vanilla extract

Whip for a while, color if you want.