Snap Pea and Radicchio-Basil Pizza

I love making pizza at home. The topping options are vast and limitless, and my creations are often more interesting than the standard choices available at most pizza parlors. Pizza-making at home is also a great way to take advantage of seasonal ingredients: Currently, my crisper is full of sugar snap peas, spring onions, and plush bunches of basil, and so all three made their way onto this spring version.

Also, pizza parties. They’re a thing. You can prepare all these toppings ahead of time (as well as many others, whatever you can think of), so that guests can assemble their own. Each pizza only spends a few minutes in the oven. If you prefer to be outside, cook your pizzas on the grill.

Some general advice: fight the urge to overload each pizza with toppings. Fight it! Trust me, I learned the hard way, and I still have to remind myself every time. Too many toppings, and the dough will become laden and impossible to slide onto the pizza stone. Too many toppings, and the dough will be a soggy, unruly mess. Remember, you want the dough to crisp up on the bottom! Read more »

Roasted Broccoli Pesto Spaghetti with Veal-Ricotta Meatballs

This recipe came together the way many of my recipes do: After filling my bike basket to the brim with farmers market loot, I had to figure out how to tie all those ingredients together into something, you know, halfway cohesive.

Some ladies lust after designer heels, while I prefer the first first broccoli of the year. A shopping problem is still a shopping problem.

This weekend, I came home with: fresh ricotta, ground veal, purple spring onions, parsley, garlic, as well as the aforementioned broccoli. I laid it all out on the kitchen table, and got to thinking.

Good salads are all about balance. Here, bitter-bright endive and radicchio play against the umami of baked olives and browned mushrooms. The richness of mozzarella and egg yolk serve as foil to the mellow garlic-bite of ramps, and the acidity of lemon juice. A thin sheen of pesto brings the whole plate together. This salad is best served on a rainy spring day: It’s bright, flavorful, and texturally varied; satisfying, but not filling.

In other, salad-unrelated news, the Frenchman and I are off to Charleston for the weekend. We have never been, and I’m quite looking forward to sampling the local cuisine. As is my custom, I’ve planned the weekend largely around market visits, and late-but-I-don’t-care dinner reservations. (Frenchman, if you are reading this, don’t worry: we’re spending a whole half day at the beach!) I hope to return with wondrous photographs, and a whole slew of new recipe ideas. Read more »

Spring Onion-and-Herb Tart

Goodness gracious, these past few weeks have been busy. If you’ll allow me, I’d also like to blame the farmers market (and the weather, I suppose, by extention) for my temporary absence from the airwaves: the overall lack of new and snazzy green things has left me a bit writer’s blocked.

But here we are! With a tart! It’s mighty tasty. It makes great brunch, lunch, or dinner. (Add a salad, and perhaps some roasted taters, and you’re in business.) It works for right now, with whatever vegetation you can scrounge at the market, but it will also work later, when peas and asparagus finally do make an appearance. It will continue to work once summer produce–tomatoes!–arrive.

This tart is like a quiche, but with half the guilt, half the commitment: it’s fairy thin, so you won’t feel heavy or fatigued after enjoying it. You are very welcome to take the tart base, and the dairy, and then invent your own tart from there. Vegetables, herbs, and cheese: go crazy! Get inventing. Read more »

Not-So-Virtuous Kale and Brussels Sprouts Salad

Trust me, dear readers: I so badly wanted to provide a super verdant, completely fresh, hugely springtime recipe today. I wanted to be like every other food magazine, extolling the virtues of tender spring peas swimming in warm cream, or mashed with hot pepper against a scrap of olive oiled toast. Of course I want to stir ramps into my Carbonara, or braise skinny stalks of asparagus in Meyer lemon. I’ve been siting on a fava bean soup recipe for the better part of a year.

But do you know what I found at the farmers market yesterday? Root vegetables. Oh, root vegetables: it’s nothing personal, but you’re starting to depress me. Beets, carrots, and sweet potatoes. Turnips, and not the sweet baby spring ones (that should be roasted and eaten at room temperature, dribbled in spring-garlicky aioli), but turnips the size of softballs. There was not a single stalk of rhubarb hidden behind the parsnips.

I did find kale and brussels sprouts in abundance, though, and while I’m not a huge fan of either–the kale (in everything) and brussels sprouts (with bacon) craze is largely lost on me–I jumped at their mere greenness. It’s almost a spring salad, right? Right? Read more »

Slow-Roasted Carrots with Lamb and Spring Onion Dressing

Despite the fact that it’s still freezing cold in New York City (literally); despite the fact that the forecast reads “winter mix” more days than not (a phrase that sounds like it should be a jazz CD sold in coffee shops, but is actually a horrendous blend of ice-rain-snow)–yesterday was the first day of spring.

Clearly, my fantasies of delicate pea tendrils and narrow stalks of asparagus aren’t coming to fruition as quickly as I’d like. The farmers market looks much the same now as it has all winter. Still, there are small signs of change: multi-colored carrots, new potatoes, and a small collection of scallions. This recipe utilizes two of the three.

And chives, and tender ground lamb! Two more ingredients that promise spring. My goal for this dish was to create something earthy and balanced; flavorful, but not at all winter weary. I think I’ve succeeded.

This recipe is packed with (brown) sugar, spice, and everything nice (namely, jalapeño slices, creamy dressing, and crunchy peanuts). The combination is fairly delicious, if I do say so myself. Read more »

Lentil Salad with Meyer Lemon Vinaigrette

I’ve been thinking a lot about tone and voice, and how they pertain to this blog. Although I’ve never been one for diary writing, for straightforward personal confession, I admit this is a journal of sorts. It details what I am cooking in a particular moment, as well as selected events around each recipe. I suppose creative writing of any stripe is its own kind of confession.

After a year plus of writing this blog, I’m sure my recipe-developing skills have improved. (I need only look to the archives to know this.) Part of me wants to scurry back and tweak what I know can be bettered, while another part of me is comforted by the fact that I can trace the changes. (I’m sure I’ve read similar sentiments voiced by Emma at Poires au Chocolat, but I can’t find where.) My photography skills have progressed too, as I’ve slowly learned the manual functions on my camera. Post recent birthday, I have loftier hopes still, thanks to a new lens (merci, darling Frenchman), a better editing system, and my first tripod (thanks, Mom).

But what about the other portion of the blog? The essay, the headnote, the this. When I read advice from successful bloggers, the same opinion is often echoed: “find your personal voice”, or “be yourself”. But how does one consciously follow this advice? If the hallmark of a successful blog is the convergence of skilled writing and a defined, likable personality, what qualifies the personality? From the writer’s perspective, where is the demarcating line, the happy medium, between inviting a reader into your life, and giving away the store? Read more »

Fennel, Merguez, and Preserved Meyer Lemon Braise

Here is the thing about trying to recreate childhood dishes for the Frenchman: it is invariably a petit désastre. I have tried my hand at lentils, white beans, croque-monsieur. It’s not that my attempts are bad per se (well, except for the beans. I am bean-impaired), but they simply don’t live up to expectation; they aren’t the same. What can I say? Childhood memory is a cruel competitor, particularly in the kitchen.

The following “braise” was one such attempt. The Frenchman lived in Tunisia for six years as a kid, so the man knows his way around a couscous. He loves couscous. I, on the other hand, am quite new to the dish.

I did some research, but mostly I relied on techniques I was already familiar with (to me, winter is spelled b-r-a-i-s-e), and employed ingredients I thought made sense together. I even bought couscous imported from Tunisia, which I hoped might add some authenticity to the proceedings.

When the dish came out of the oven, I though it tasted really good: the vegetables were soft, and flavored with pan juices. The sauce itself was complex and spiced, a little spicy, but not overwhelmingly so. The couscous was downy, and tasted ever so slightly of the good olive oil I stirred into it. Read more »

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