Dairy Free

Spicy Pork and Golden Raisin Rice

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As much as I would love you to think I spend my days folding compact butter into pastry dough, alternatively rolling and chilling until perfect pâte feuilletée emerges, this is simply not the case. I buy my puff pastry, because making it is simply too laborious to be worth it on a regular basis.

Shortcuts in the kitchen are useful and necessary, especially if you want to cook dinner on a weeknight and have it on the table at a reasonable hour. Full disclosure: I sometimes (fine, often) attempt ambitious projects on a Wednesday. In these cases, the Frenchman sneaks cheese from the refrigerator to stave off his hunger until I announce dinner at 10pm.

Canned beans and rotisserie chicken fall into the category of ‘kitchen shortcuts I rely on often.’ A well-made sausage cooks quickly, and is a meal after the addition of golden onions, roasty potatoes, and a lemon-dressed salad. Good canned tomatoes become a quick sauce, or shakshuka. While not technically a shortcut, an egg makes dinner shorter work, if you split the yolk and let it run. Read more »

Pulled Pork with Stone Fruit Salsa

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Cooking intrigues me for multifarious reasons, but chief among them is this: the learning process is endless. The opportunity for new challenges is endless. There will always a new ingredient to try, or a new technique to study. And even if you taste all the ingredients there are to taste, and try all the techniques there are to try (if such a thing is even possible), you would still be left with the enormous task of mixing and matching so many ingredients with so many techniques.

Learning to cook well takes time–this aspect of cooking at least is magic-less. The 700th clove of garlic you peel will naturally discard its coat more swiftly than the ones that came before it. You’ll sense vanilla custard is done now–right now, not thirty seconds from now, but now–without a thermometer only through exhaustive practice.

Writing a recipe requires imagination, yes, but imagination without context will lead you nowhere tasty in a hurry. The best recipes call upon knowledge assembled steadily over time. Like an unhurried braise, intuition in the kitchen is a gradually lacquered thing. Read more »

Pan-Fried Shishito Peppers

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Welcome to The Roaming Kitchen’s brand new, very first, Friday mini-post! I’ve decided to share my kitchen exploits with you, lovely readers, more than once a week.

These installations will fall somewhere between actual recipes and photographic inspiration; they are meant to be very simple, and manageable for even the most reluctant cook. Some ingredients will reflect the season, but more often than not, this column will show you how to coax new life into a leftover slice of bread, a nub of cheese, or a vegetable wilting in the crisper.

So, without further ado, Shishito peppers: Read more »

Gazpacho with Peaches and Jalapeño

To all my friends who say, “Cristina, I enjoy looking at your recipes, but I would never attempt one,” please let me tell you upfront: this is one you can (and should) make. It’s really, super-duper simple. It requires few dishes. The instructions boil down to: chop vegetables, mix vegetables.

It also happens to be really delicious. The ingredients are a riot of summer–a balance of sweetness and acidity, with just a gentle nudge in the direction of spicy. Those Spaniards are really on to something, because gazpacho is an ideal hot weather dish.

Here’s where some readers will groan, but please bear with me: Read more »

Lamb Meatballs with Fava Hummus

A few weeks ago, the Frenchman and I went out to dinner with a friend who was in town for a visit. Despite an après-dark temperature of 100°, we decided to sit outside. Apparently we like to be uncomfortably hot. We split a selection of small plates, and ran through more than one carafe of chilled red wine.

This friend (let’s call him Monsieur Macaroon, as he’s quite skilled at making them, and I’m still holding out hope he’ll teach me his methods) told a story about a recent, unpleasant trip to the French embassy. While MM does not have a classically French name, he does hold a French passport and birth certificate. As a result of his ‘foreign-sounding’ name though, the person behind the desk demanded further, written evidence of his Frenchness, before they would proceed with his paperwork. Read more »

Cold Sirloin Sesame Noodles

I’ve developed an unfortunate habit. It’s quite embarrassing, really, but still I persist:

I want your bones. All of them. The bigger the better. I will probably ask for yours in public. Please don’t try to fight it.

Perhaps I should explain.

In the last few months, I’ve formed a tiny obsession with homemade stocks. The understanding that bones + water + vegetables + herbs + time = liquid splendor has been revelatory. I don’t fuss over details: I use the bones, herbs and vegetables I have on hand. This way, each batch is slightly different, but always wonderful. I freeze the results in ice cube trays, and use what I need for soups, pan sauces, risotto, rice. Good stock gives new life to vegetables, mashed potatoes and leftovers alike. Read more »

Watermelon Ginger Cooler

It’s summertime, which of course means it’s time to whip up some refreshing drafts. Here’s how I approach my cocktailage:

1. Use ingredients that that are, themselves, inherently restorative under wilting conditions.*
2. Keep it simple. Try to keep your concoctions to five ingredients or less.
3. Locate your fine self a cabana/pool/palm-draped hammock.** Relax. Imbibe. Read more »

Lamb and Saffron Rice with Spring Vegetables

Rice and me, we aren’t quite simpatico.

For starters, I didn’t grow up eating it; the starch of choice in my parent’s house was pasta. Personally, I have an ongoing love affair with potatoes of all stripes. I was, at best, ambivalent about the grain, until I got to culinary school.

In French culinary school, you are taught to make rice the old-fashioned way: in a pan, covered with a perfect wheel of parchment paper. (My “wheels” looked more like drunk hexagons, but I digress.) Read more »