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 »

Sausage with Apples and Garbanzos

I am swimming in apples.

I just can’t get ahead of them. The whole kerfuffle started when a friend went apple picking and brought me home a massive bag. Since then, my CSA has provided a steady supply, and well. My recipe-brain has been stretched this fall, trying to think of more and more creative uses for all my apples.

Most often, I eat them simply: to lend a sweet snap to a ham sandwich. Or alone, with cheese and charcuterie (goat cheese and triple-crème are special favorites). They are nice with soups, as the weather turns, like tomato, carrot, or squash.

You can bake them in a crisp until the apple melts into itself, stirred together with nutmeg and golden sugar. Or bake them as they are until caramelized, with butter and apple cider. Top with ice cream or Greek yogurt. 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 »

Duck Breasts with Concord Sauce

Like many Americans, I grew up eating seedless, thin-skinned grapes. It wasn’t until I visited the Frenchman’s family that I tasted my first sour grape, small and green as a jade bead, thoroughly packed with bitter seeds. Neither variety left me particularly inspired.

And then, and then. I received a punnet of Concord grapes in my CSA basket this week. Holy milkshakes. Are these ever game-changing grapes.

First of all, they are very nice to look at: inky in shades of dusty, Prussian blue, their skins lightly variegated like crushed velvet. But what really gets me is how they smell. There is no other way to say it–they smell like candy. They smell like grape Jolly Ranchers in perfume form.

My apartment is small. When I lay them on the kitchen table, I can smell them from almost every corner. I feel like some kind of crazed addict, pulling long, conspicuous sniffs as I go about my writing. Read more »

Spicy Pork and Golden Raisin Rice

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

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 »

Spring Soup

After months and months of the same old, same old at the market—the same ruddy sweet potatoes, the same crinkled white onions—these days it’s flush with new gems all the time, and I am unapologetically thrilled about it. Last week I collected peach blossom branches (note: peach blossom branches do not fit into bicycle baskets; you will look clumsy all the way home), and this week I scooped up bundles of perfumed lilacs, to fill every available ledge of my apartment.

Broccolini arrived this week, which I plan to boil in salty water until it just yields, and then toss lovingly with olive oil and Pecorino. There are a multitude of baby lettuces to consider, not to mention the asparagus I will barely roast and toss with lemon juice or egg yolk. And what about radishes? They should be sliced thinly and strewn across buttery toast, sprinkled with sea salt…. It’s a good time to be a cook. Read more »

“Doggy Bag” Chicken Soup

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 Roaming Kitchen

Original Recipes and Culinary Yarns

Warming