Pear-Vanilla Bourbon Warmer

Since the holidays are fast approaching, I wanted to fashion a weather-appropriate drink with enough versatility to please a crowd. I think I’ve succeeded. (At any rate, I think it’s pretty delicious.)

The result of blending pears with nutmeg, cinnamon, and vanilla is a warming, satisfying cocktail that takes a hint of freshness from Meyer lemons. As a bonus, whipping up the syrup will make your house smell insanely great.

The pear-vanilla syrup recipe yields about 1/2 cup. If you don’t use it all for cocktails (or mocktails for the kids), warm it and pour it over: yogurt, ice cream, fruit, hot cereal. Stir it into tea, or a hot toddy. It can be brushed onto cake or pastry as a glaze. 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 »

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 »

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 »

The Roaming Kitchen

Original Recipes and Culinary Yarns

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