Domesticity

I guess it's been a while since my last post. April and May were a blur of activity. I've moved in with M, which means cooking for another person, which is a pleasure. It's also interesting to find out her likes and dislikes and fine tune my food to find a happy medium between us. The greatest difficulty thus far is getting her to open up about what she thinks about the food. I think she thinks it's complaining, rather than valuable feedback. Just one of the many adjustments we've both had to make.

Some food notes from the last few months, in no particular order:

• We went and stayed with M's sister in Kentucky to go see the Kentucky Derby qualifiers at Keeneland. One of the activities for the weekend was tailgating. The stand-out was the cold fried chicken. They bought it the night before and put it in the fridge while it was still warm. It was unbelievably good the next day. The big lesson here is that you should always buy exactly as much chicken as you need, no more, because if there are leftovers, the remorse of having chilled a devastatingly good piece of fried chicken for no good reason sticks with you for a while.
• In Lexington, I tried David Chang's recipe for roast brussels sprouts with kimchi and bacon, but without the kimchi. It was a dud, mostly because the sprouts were big and sort of grainy. I'm still trying to figure out how to treat those big sprouts you get at the market. Long, slow cooking to reduce them to buttery sweetness is one thing I haven't tried yet. Must consult M about her feelings on this.
  
• The Nathan's hot dogs are better at Shea Stadium than Yankee Stadium... but I might just have gotten lucky and gotten a well-heated dog off the hot rollers, where usually they come steamed out of the box the vendor carries. Oh, and they have better mustard at Shea.
  
• The tiny kitchen in our new apartment has spilled out into the entryway. Lots of shelving with lots of cookware.
• We have a dishwasher now.
• I made curried cauliflower, with coconut milk, mustard seeds, frozen tamarind pulp and onions. It was pretty good. Not sure if I like the souring effect of the tamarind. I think next time just a basic curry.
• Last night, I made beef short rib biryani, to be eaten today. Simple recipe but calls for long cooking. Will update on how it went.
• We went to the Strip House, a steakhouse near Union Square, with some coworkers of mine. Awesome duck fat potatoes and creamed spinach. I was lukewarm on the steak. We took home some of M's rack of lamb and some of the creamed spinach (with white truffle oil). I made a bechamel and stirred in the spinach, tossed this with orecchiette. I sliced the lamb thin and reheated it. I layered the lamb over the pasta and then deglased the pan to make a broth, which I poured over the whole thing. It was really great. I tried to recreate this with my own, lighter version of creamed spinach, with cannelini added, given the affinity between spinach, lamb and white beans, but it had to sit overnight due to a miscommunication, so ended up mushy. I'd like to try this recipe again, maybe with a braised lamb neck, stripped and shredded, and cannelini over creamed spinach, served over noodles. Maybe penne would be a better option.
  
• We now live upstairs from Tal Bagels, voted the best bagels in the city in 2005 (Citysearch). I've been going down regularly in the mornings to pick up a pumpernickel and a sesame bagel. They're usually hot out of the oven, with the crust anywhere between still-cripsy and slightly chewy. An unbelievable pleasure. I hated pumpernickel before, but guess I just hadn't had a good one. Their lox are incredibly expensive at $36 a pound, but are oily and soft and just don't stand up to the stuff from the supermarket. So for now that's a Sunday treat. It's supplanted smoothies and eggs as the breakfast of choice... and for good reason.
• 2 lbs of green beans is a LOT of green beans.
• I made risotto primavera with green beans (see above), asparagus, shredded carrot, and some leftover homemade basil. There wasn't enough parm to grate into it, but pregrated pecorino romano did just fine. The rice was mushy, though, so I guess I'm out of practice with the pressure cooker...
• I suppose using the pressure cooker on those curried beef short ribs would make it a week night dish. Must remember to try that.
• We're using FreshDirect now. I like their butchery, even if it's expensive. The veggies are passable, not really the quality I was expecting. They carry kefir, which simplifies the guanabana smoothie to three ingredients.
• It's lychee season!
  

Live & Learn

Since M's on a shoot in New Jersey this past week or so, I've had occasion to do a lot more cooking. She's been coming home late and getting out early, so I've made sure to cook healthy but comforting dinners for her when I could. Last weekend, I made borscht, sort of accidentally. I made roasted beets as a side dish for a ground beef & cabbage stew with potatoes, then decided to chop and throw in the beets at the last minute. It was very good and rich, though I'd have liked to maybe have some potato starch to thicken up the broth a little at the end.

Yesterday, I went to Mario's, the Italian butcher in my neighborhood, and got the ingredients for bucatini all'amatriciana, which is a favorite for M. Pancetta, a couple cans of San Marzano tomatoes, some ground pecorino romano, and, actually, perciatelli, which is smaller in diameter than bucatini (since we'd had a little trouble last time eating the bucatini without spilling sauce all over us). I also got a couple of fresh-made sausages, some rusks and some prosciutto. As usual, it was ridiculously cheap, around $20 for the same stuff I would've paid at least $50 for at Citarella or Dean & Deluca.

I had to get some onions and some cheese for Italian Breakfast, and some broccoli rabe to have as a side dish, so I stopped by the regular supermarket. There, I decided to change things up, and do orecchiette with sausage and broccoli rabe instead. Like Amatriciana, it takes to having pecorino romano sprinkled over rather than parmigiano, so the fact that I'd forgotten to get parmigiano at Mario's wasn't a problem. What was a problem, however, was that I'd underestimated the importance of having the right pasta for the dish I was making. I couldn't find orecchiette, so I didn't get any more pasta at all, remembering that I'd randomly found good orecchiette pugliese at the bodega across the street (which rarely has anything good at all).

I couldn't find the orecchiette, so I just decided to go with the perciatelli, broken in half. Not a terrible mistake, but I did have it demonstrated to me when I cooked the dish just how important having the right pasta is. Had I to do it over again without orecchiette, I would've gone with penne rigate instead, as it has the ridges to pick up and hold the juice which comprises the sauce. The most important thing for this recipe is peeling the broccoli rabe well.

Orecchiette with Sausage, Broccoli Rabe and Roasted Garlic

Serves 4 as a main dish, 6 as a primo

1 head garlic
olive oil
salt

1-2 bunches broccoli rabe (depending on how much you like it)
1 lb Italian pork sausage, removed from its casing (you can use sweet or hot)
pinch red pepper flakes (if using sweet sausage)
1 lb orecchiette

plenty of good extra virgin olive oil
lots of fresh ground black pepper
pecorino romano

1. Preheat the oven to 400F. Put a large pot of lightly salted water on high heat.
   
2. Cut the top half-inch off the head of garlic so you can see the tops of the cloves. Drizzle with a little olive oil, sprinkle with some salt, wrap well in foil and roast for 40 minutes.
3. While the garlic roasts, trim the broccoli rabe, peeling the stems from the bottom up to the flower. Cut the stalks into 1" pieces. Boil for 4-5 minutes, then drain and plunge into cold water to stop the cooking. Put another fresh pot of water on for the pasta.
   
4. In a large skillet, saute the sausage, breaking it up into small pieces with the back of a wooden spoon. Drain the sausage on paper towels. Wipe out the skillet and add a couple tablespoons olive oil.
5. When the water boils, start cooking the pasta.
   
6. When the garlic is done, unwrap and, holding in a dishtowel, squeeze the garlic into the skillet, followed by a pinch of red pepper flakes, the sausage, and the broccoli rabe. Add a little of the pasta cooking water.
7. Toss the pasta with the sauce, a good amount of olive oil, pepper, and pecorino romano. Serve immediately
   

Vegetable Dinner

Dinner was less successful than lunch. I went to the store and got some supplies. We ended up with udon noodles in portobello mushroom soup with grilled chicken breasts, which was fine, but as M pointed out, the noodle soup weather is waning now.

I also made a side dish of chickpeas, brussels sprouts, beet greens, onions, and chorizo (yes, again). It was good but needs improvement.

Made roasted beets, too. Roasted in foil for 2 hours at 350° with a little olive oil and salt. Maybe next time I'll save the foil and just roast them in cast iron. Or maybe even beets en pappillote. The recipe called for simply washing them and leaving the stems on. The peels just slide right off the beets with the outer layer of flesh. Even if they're too hot to handle, you can do this under cold running water and be fine, plus they'll retain enough of their heat, even under the water, to serve immediately. I would have liked a little chopped flat-leaf parsley and maybe some lemon, but they were great just all by themselves. Looking forward to fresh spring veggies!