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
Some of you may have noticed a bit of a lapse in recipe posting as of late. This is due to the fact that I am about to graduate from my Master’s program (exciting), and my attentions have been thusly diverted with things like terrifying thesis-readings, employment searches and retrieving my cap and gown (brown velvet trim, really?).
While I don’t have time to blather on as I usually do before a recipe, I wanted to post something regardless. Here are the essentials: Read more
If you ask the Frenchman, he’ll tell you I only ever order one dish when we go out to dinner: chicken. This isn’t true of course, but I will admit that chicken is my backup dish, my reliable mainstay amongst the flotsam and jetsam of an uninspiring menu. (It doesn’t hurt that chicken dishes typically arrive with some kind of saucy vegetable and potato arrangement, but that is neither here nor there.)
Last week we had friends visiting from France, and so I used the opportunity to knock a restaurant or two off my Must Try list. (It’s a long list, alas.) One evening, we dined in a restaurant where every hostess was certainly a model. I’d read an article about the owner; he raised chickens (well, not he, but people he employed) on a devastatingly bucolic farm somewhere upstate in order to supply the restaurant with high-quality poultry. This kind of information is like catnip to me; of course, I had to try it. Read more
The fact of the matter is, I have never made chili before. Not really. I didn’t grow up in a “comfort food” household, and I do not spend my days herding cattle. I have no hockey team to feed. And since you can’t exactly whip up a single portion of chili, it never occurred to me to throw together a pot full. (A silly notion, considering how beautifully chili freezes.)
As a result of my chili ignorance, I was only vaguely aware of the rules surrounding the dish—beans vs. no beans, what cut of meat to use, what variety of chili pepper….and so on. I arrived at this recipe the same way any self-respecting nerd would have: I read everything I could get my hands on. Read more
For Christmas this year, Paul’s grandparents gave me a book called La Cuisine Authentique de nos Grand-mères (translation: The Authentic Cooking of our Grandmothers). It is easily one of the best gifts I’ve ever received. I am currently working my way through all 400 butcher-paper pages, albeit slowly; there is only so much français a girl can read at a time, even when it pertains to la cuisine.
The book is full of the kind of French home cooking that made me fall in love with spending time in the kitchen in the first place. Best-quality ingredients are emphasized, and the recipes encourage slowing down for a minute. You simply cannot flambée les bananes au rhum with your mind on other things. (Well, I suppose you could, but in that I case I suggest you keep a fire extinguisher on hand.) Read more
Key lime pie is my very favorite dessert, of all time, in the world. That is–when it is done properly. Because, to sound like a snob, it is almost never done properly. The next time you are in the supermarket, take a gander to the bakery department. You might find a key lime pie there, but more likely it is only something masquerading as a key lime pie. Have a look at the ingredients. Are there more than five? Take a look at the color. Does it look like an experiment in florescents gone bad?
Real key lime pie, the kind you find in restaurants in southern Florida, only has four ingredients: sweetened condensed milk, key lime juice, key lime zest and egg yolks. It is pale yellow, almost white, and has the consistency of thick custard. Read more
I have never cared much for nuts. I know there are women who count small handfuls of almonds as a satisfying afternoon snack. Alas, I am not one of them. The addition of walnuts and macadamias have long been reason enough to snub my nose at salads and muffins alike. But I am starting to change. I blame it on a shop near my apartment, The Nut Box. I only stopped by in the first place because the store looked so.. well, organized. Blonde wood compartments house rows upon rows of neatly packaged and clearly labeled nuts, and I am the kind of person who stops into The Container Store for fun.
I was throwing a party over the weekend, so I thought, “what’s the harm in picking up a few things?” (Answer: there is never harm in picking up a few things, especially when “things” are obscure food items. Bonus points if you have no clear idea when or how to use them.) Read more
My boyfriend and I are currently spending our second Christmas together at his family’s seaside home on the western coast of France. (I know, I have a really terrible life). We have only been here one day, but already I find myself one luscious recipe richer. Tonight we leave for his grandmother’s house, where I am hoping even more recipes await. Oh, they joys of Christmas!
While it might be shameful to admit, before last night, I never considered that one could prepare foie gras at home. I thought surely it was one of those things rendered by magical elves with fantastic meat-related powers. Surely it required chicken wire and microscopes and a secret family formula jealously guarded over five centuries. Read more