Strawberry-Kissed Walnut Sablés

Butter, sugar, salt. When balanced properly, is there a happier confluence of ingredients? (The answer is no, unless you’d like to discuss the merits of cream, yolks, and sugar.)

My goal for this batch of cookies was to bridge the transition weeks from warm to colder weather. Toasted walnuts and notes of nutmeg tackle the ‘oh my, it’s quite nippy, I think I’d like something conforming’ aspects of fall, while drops of strawberry jam brighten each sablé and remind of sunny afternoons.

I decided these sablés (a word that means “sand” in French, in reference to both the cookie’s color and texture) should be pop-able, but ample enough so that a few would satisfy. Read more »

Three Husk Cherry Recipes

I received a punnet of husk cherries a few weeks ago in my CSA box (their season is September-October around these parts), and I’ll be honest with you; upon first inspection, I didn’t really know what they were. I’d seen them a few times before, adoring desserts in European restaurants, but in those cases I’d pushed them to the side of the plate–surely they were meant more for decoration than actual consumption?

As it transpires, husk cherries (also know as Ground Cherries, Golden Strawberries, Chinese Lanterns, and in French as the very charming Amour-en-Cage, or ‘caged love’) are quite delicious. 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 »

Burrata, Basil, Crispy Egg Sandwich

Today I offer you a poem and a sandwich. I hope you enjoy them both.

First, the poem:

Wild Geese
By Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves. Read more »

Nectarine Hazelnut Tart

This was supposed to be one tart recipe, but it morphed into two. The reason being, when you toss an assemblage of ingredients into a food processor and hope they will magically whiz together into tart dough, well.. they don’t always cooperate. Baking has rules. Toasted hazelnuts and a stick of butter do not a tart dough make.

The first crust recipe I tried (which you’ll see in some of the pictures) was far too buttery, and too crumbly. (Just take my word for it that there is such a thing.) Even after some solo time in the oven, the crust would’ve been far better scattered over the top of the nectarines than underneath them.

On my second go around, I added more flour, a touch of baking soda, and an egg. These additions provided much needed structure. Note to self: making dough is not reinventing the wheel. Read more »

Nectarines for Brunch

The other night, the Frenchman and I biked to the river. We dismounted at the promenade, parked the bikes against the railing, and sat down on one of the benches facing Governor’s Island, the Statue of Liberty, and lower Manhattan. The sun set over the water, and he asked me what was for dinner.”Well, I made a stock from pork and chicken bones, an onion, celery, garlic, peppercorns, thyme, bay leaves, and a little ginger. Then I caramelized some onions, which I’ll swirl into the broth, after I add two eggs for poaching. Then I’ll pour the broth, the onions, and the poached eggs over that last nub of stale baguette I found in the bread bowl.Also, I made a kind of ratatouille with zucchini and tomatoes from this week’s CSA box, plus thyme, garlic, and shallots. I cooked it down with red wine and olive oil, a pinch of sugar, salt, and pepper. Then I stirred in the croutons leftover from the weekend. I spooned it into individual ramekins, dotted the top with goat cheese and shaved Parmesan, and I’ll put them in the oven until the tops are bubbling.”There was a pause. “So.. we’re having soup?” 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 »

The Roaming Kitchen

Original Recipes and Culinary Yarns