Butternut, Apple, and Parsnip Soup with Smoked Duck

Hello/Bonjour! Long time no see. My self-imposed winter break lasted a little longer than I originally intended, but now I am back and raring to go.

Let’s get right to this soup. It is perfect in every way you hope a January soup will be. It is oh so easy to make (like, actually easy), and quite economical too. If you make it a day ahead, it will only taste better upon reheating. It freezes beautifully. (Make a double batch to tuck into the freezer for some other night.)

The squash, apple, and parsnip balance together famously. The soup itself is a little sweet, a little sharp, and incredibly rich in flavor, while low in calories. (You know I don’t normally care about such things, but what with January being a month of resolutions, I figured it was worth mentioning.)

The only bad part about this soup is peeling the butternut squash. I abhor peeling butternut squash. Alas, we can’t have everything in life. Read more »

Pearl Couscous with Roasty Roots, Chickpeas, and Pepitas

Ce soir, the Frenchman and I depart for a nine-day visit to France.

We haven’t been to Angoulins since the summer. Then, we swam at high tide, ate every meal outside, and padded barefoot around the porch. In winter, his seaside home is no less beautiful, although obviously much colder. This time, we will curl up in front of the fire, eat foie gras on toast (it’s Christmas, in France, after all), and meander to the beach with a bottle of Champagne on Christmas Day (avec shoes, thankfully).

I am looking forward to the trip, and to the break. I just have one quibble: if it were up to me, we’d teleport directly from our living room, straight into the Frenchman’s living room. (I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve asked the Frenchman to invent teleportation. Then, he could sleep at home every night, even during business trips. He assures me he’s on top of it, although I have yet to see results.)

The trouble is, I am terrified of flying. I know, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, plane-safety statistics being what they are, and considering how often I fly. Still, I am thrown into a tizzy every time I board a plane. It’s not great. To make matters worse, the Air France terminal at JFK is just the pits. (I know, my life is terrible!) Unless you enjoy rubbery chicken with sprayed-on grill marks, or Chinese food languishing under a heat lamp, you’re out of luck. Read more »

Arugula Salmon Salad with Crisp Fingerlings and Cotija

I present to you this salad, because soon, very soon, we’ll launch without abandon into holiday-ready, cold weather recipes, and I wanted to offer one last breath of sunshine on the plate before we do. (In fact, my next two recipes will be desserts worthy of a Thanksgiving table. Consider this salad a sort of nutricional counter.)

This dish is based on an old menu item from The Madison in Hoboken. Their model included salmon, arugula, red onion, and crispy fingerlings, but also jicama, tomato, and feta, should you like that combination better. (Clearly I haven’t adapted the original too much; what can I say, it was already a really tasty salad.)

I’ve never been much of a, “Oh, I’ll just have the salad for dinner,” kind of orderer, but for this one I always made an exception. It’s satiating, but never heavy. The flavors are clean and the textures balance well. In short, it’s just the ticket before launching into a holiday eating program. Read more »

Onion Soup

One of the more entertaining aspects of my relationship with the Frenchman is our collective opportunity to play with language. At any given moment, one of us is speaking in a third language, and so mistakes are made. More often than not, we bend it to our liking in the name of wordy nerdiness.

While we met in Spain and started our friendship in Spanish, it’s probably our least fluent language now. Still, we both weave Spanish words and expressions into conversation, and use it to aid French and English when we don’t know a word. (I have recently taken to employing “tranquiler” as a French verb meaning “to calm down”. The problem is, the French word is actually “calmer”, far more similar to English than the Spanish “tranquilizar”. I will not be stopped!)

Before I met the Monsieur, I never gave much thought to the ‘Frenchisms’ we’ve adopted in English. Some make sense, like “French Toast”: French people really do eat pain perdu (“lost bread”) when baguettes go stale, although in France they make it far less sweet than we do, and it’s more likely to be served as dessert than for breakfast. Read more »

Sweet Potato “Fries” with Za’atar and Labneh

Inspiration for this recipe comes straight from the pages of Jerusalem, the new cookbook by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi. As with Ottolenghi’s last book, this volume happily demonstrates how colorful, complete, complex, and satisfying a plate of vegetables can be. (No one is paying me to say that, but for the record, I accept payment in the form of Kitchen Aid Mixers and candied pecans.)

As is my habit with new cookbooks, the first thing I do is flip through the pages and look at the pictures. (Before I delve into the text, I like to imagine what ingredients a given dish might hold; this makes it easier to come up with adaptations and fresh ideas, before I know what I’m ‘really looking at’.)

And so it was that I planned this recipe in my mind-grapes, before I knew what I was really looking at: a plate of roasted butternut squash with red onions, parsley, and toasted pine nuts. What I picked up from the picture alone was the image of bold, orange roasty roots, za’atar, and tahini. Read more »

My Eggs in Purgatory

You have likely seen versions of this recipe scattered across the internet. It answers to the name shakshouka as well, an Israeli dish by way of Tunisia. But this is my own little version, which I’ve filtered to my liking and nudged in the direction of Italy.

This is a recipe of many virtues: It might look as if it were whisked from a restaurant kitchen, but it is truly easy to make, and truly quick. It’s manageable for cooks of all abilities. What’s more, it requires minimal contrivances: a knife, a cutting board, a spoon, a pan. That is all.

This is largely a pantry dish, so call upon it when you are low on time and supplies, but don’t want to sacrifice taste. (Never sacrifice taste.) Adjust the ingredient quantities/pan size depending on how many people you will be feeding, and by all means, feel free to experiment with your own additions: herbs, spices, and vegetables are all fair game. The recipe as presented is vegetarian, but I doubt anyone would complain at the addition of sausage or ground lamb, perhaps a meatball or two. Read more »

October Shepherd’s Pie

This is less a recipe than a concerned effort to use up all the fall CSA vegetables idling in the crisper. And the thyme withering in its sleeve. And the last tiddly-bits of goat cheese camping out in the cheese drawer. (Yes, that’s right. We have a drawer in the fridge entirely devoted to cheese. I would like to blame it entirely on the Frenchman, but that would be a downright lie.)

Feel free to use my base as inspiration for your own seasonal shepherd’s pie. The goal is to find balance: each layer should play off the flavors and textures of the last one. Creamy should give way to crisp. Sweet, spicy, bitter, and salty can all have their moment in the sun. It goes without saying that when you use vegetables at the peak of their season, you’re eating vegetables that taste like their best selves.

This recipe is also an opportunity to use up leftovers. Last night’s vegetables are fair game. Any kind of puree–I’m thinking mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, squash, or any other mashed-up root vegetable–can be spread over the top. This is a good time to use up those last nubbins of cheese. Read more »

The Best Veggie Burger Ever

PLEASE SEE THE UPDATED VERSION OF THIS RECIPE HERE.

Yes, yes, the title of this post is bound to invite raised eyebrows. Could this really be the best veggie burger, of all time, ever? Well, I can tell you this with full confidence: this here veggie burger is the best I’ve tasted by some margin.

Because here is the thing–given the choice between a beef or lamb hamburger and a vegetable facsimile, I would never normally choose the later. Ever.

It’s not that I have something against vegetables. In fact, I quite like vegetables, in their natural state, or coaxed with a bit of heat, olive oil and sea salt. But veggie burgers are not vegetables. Veggie burgers have always seemed to me a strange and unhappy amalgamation of rabbit food mash, a strict and humorless attempt to appease those who forgo meat. Read more »

The Roaming Kitchen

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