Some days, I think ahead to what we should have for dinner. Sometimes I make a list and go shopping, or ask Christine to pick something up on her way to or from something. Sometimes we actually have food on hand that demands to be made into delicious dinners, and no thought is required. Some days none of the above is true. On just such a day, I came in from the studio, grouchy because…
Category: Baking
Homemade sourdough, this time with 30% whole wheat, where the dough sat in the fridge for 6 days getting good and sour. And, building upon this tangy, crackling foundation, some carciofi alla romana and local, organic navy beans pressure-cooked with guanciale, mirepoix, herbs, and smoked duck broth, and finished with truffle and olive oils. I’ve been loving the shellfish lately, especially given their highly sustainable status, and big bowls of this (here steamed with sake,…
Winter’s back is broken. There’s no doubt about it. A week ago it was almost 60˚, and bare ground now roughly balances the areas still covered in snow. Liquid water is a not-uncommon sight outside during the day. The birds are beginning to go apeshit every morning. And the smell of soil and plants is emerging to mingle with the warming air. I don’t suggest that we aren’t due for several more beat-downs, but there’s…
We had some gravy left from the roast chicken, and the crepinettes were calling from the freezer. It was a cold, grouchy sort of day, sorely lacking in inspiration, and some serious comfort food seemed like an appropriate antidote. Biscuits popped into my mind, though I’m pretty sure I’ve never made them before; originally the thought was to make these for brunch the next morning, but then I quickly succumbed to the trashy pleasures of…
When John and Debi got married, Andrew and Melissa came to stay with us for the weekend. They brought us two loaves of his mighty bread and some of the sourdough starter required for its making, and I reverently put the culture in the fridge and kept meaning to do something with it but never did. Then, recently, A&M sent us a thank you-holiday gift of some cookies and an array of bread-making tools. Shortly…
So yesterday was busy, and exciting. I’ll get into the new developments later on. And today was a continuation of the busy, if a little less exciting. By midafternoon, when I had a minute to breathe, it occurred to me that whipping up some pizza dough would provide us with a good substrate for whatever was in the fridge come dinner time. And I knew there was some good mozzarella in there, which kind of…
It probably goes without saying that I was pretty tired of cooking, so after ordering pizza for Friday night it was a great treat to join a whole bunch of friends at Swami Bruce’s place for a giant meal prepared by Lillian, an editor at Gourmet. She threw down some serious fried chicken with a million delicious sides (among which, roasted cauliflower, braised cabbage, chip-addictive romaine salad) and we made it all disappear. What a…
On Monday, Christine expressed a hankering for pot pie, and we had the chicken wings that I used to make broth still in the fridge, so it seemed like a good idea. I made crust, and pulled the meat off the wings, and sautéed onion, garlic, radish, yellow beet, and sweet potato, dusted all with flour and added the rest of the tom kha gai from the day before. I let it simmer for a…
In the cooler weather, I’ve been craving homemade bread, but as a lead-in pizza crust did the trick. To give it some extra zing, I thought to grill it in order to avoid heating the house up with a 500˚ oven. We made two: a Margherita, and a zucchini, onion, tomato, olive, and herb. the olives came from elsewhere. We grew the rest, and the flour and cheese were local. Our tomatoes are peaking, so…
Probably the single best thing about a garden in summer is that if there are even a couple of pantry staples in the house the question “what’s for dinner?” becomes a reason to smile rather than worry. In this case, with some leftover lentil soup and half a recipe of pie crust in the fridge, a sumptuous and exalted pot pie was brought into being on short notice. I took a little hunk of salt…