Wedding Bucatini with Peas, Spinach and Herb Ricotta + A Tieks Giveaway

I doubt this will surprise anyone, but–I cared a lot about the food we served at the wedding. I wanted our guests to enjoy a truly delicious meal–not an easy task when catering to 150 people at once! I also wanted to showcase the season, at the expense of established “wedding food” favorites.

For months, I worked back and forth with our caterer (Hi, Matt, Maureen and Christina!) until we settled on the menu you see below. All the work was more than worth it–I loved the final product. I’ll never forget it. I wish I could eat these dishes over and over again!

This post is my effort to recreate one of our wedding dishes at home. My version deviates from the original in style, but it brings the same flavors to the table. I hope you enjoy it as much as we did!

I’m also really pleased to talk about Tieks in this post, since I wear them nearly every day. They are crazy comfortable, fold up for purse-sized storage, and come in a bunch of colors and patterns. (I actually gifted Tieks to the bridesmaids at the wedding, and spent most of my night rocking these.) I concede they’re on the pricier side, but I’ve had my current pair going on two years–I still love them, and I think they’re totally worth the investment. And something else–the people who work at there are just the absolute kindest.

As a gift to you, I’d like to give away a $100 gift certificate to one lucky reader. To enter: 1) Follow Tieks on one of their social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter). 2) Leave a note in the comments–what is the best or worst food you’ve ever had at a wedding? ~~The contest will close Sunday, June 21st at 11:59pm.~~ Thank you to everyone who participated!

On Saturday, the Frenchman and I are getting married. It’s happening. After so many months of scheming and dreaming, the event is now just two days away.

I’m a bit chicken-with-her-head-cut-off at the moment, but I wanted to stop into this space to say hello, I’m still here! And to share this strawberry-vanilla cake with you, which is perfect for right now. Avis sur levitra generique.

One more thing: here is our wedding reading, a passage I’ve long-appreciated for it’s honest approach to love and the life of a long term relationship.

There’s an article on Food52 today about the poet Jacqueline Suskin‘s new book, Go Ahead & Like It. Its pages are a hodgepodge of images, lists, and sketches–a collection of ‘things Suskin likes,’ built over time.

The editors at Food52 took this premise to heart, and created their own lists.

It sounds simple, but each list was a pleasure–each author so specific and so particular. It’s spiritually satisfying: a reminder to meditate on the small, happy things that wing through our day to day lives. The payoff of such a daily practice is both literary and psychological.

I wrote my own list below. It’s what floated to the surface on a Wednesday morning at the end of April, less than five weeks from my wedding, in my office in Hoboken.

– The words, “pamplemousse,” “murciélago,” and “soup”
– Haroun and the Sea of Stories
– Meticulous trip-planning
– Going to the movies alone, preferably with a giant water bottle and a rice krispie treat
– Mechanical pencils
– Not wearing shoes or pants
– Bright lipstick
– Doughnuts from Doughnut Plant + pie from Four and Twenty Blackbirds
– My in-laws’ backyard in France
– Falling asleep mid-conversation
– Grilled pizza
– The poetry of Lynn Emanuel
– Arrested Development
– Listening to books on tape while cooking, cleaning, or packing

I’d love to read your lists as well. Please leave them in the comments!

For those living the the New York area, I’ll be in Hudson, NY this Saturday May 2nd from 12-4pm for the Fifth Annual Ramp Fest Hudson. 20 chefs (from Hudson + New York City) are set to participate, including plenty of my local favorites like The Crimson Sparrow, Ca’Mea, Swoon Kitchenbar, and Fish & Game.

It’ll be like eating at twenty awesome, ramp-focused restaurants in one day. Heaven.

The event will be held at the Basilica Hudson (handily located across the street from the Hudson Amtrak station. It’s a 2.5-ish hour drive from Brooklyn-Hudson, or a 2 hour train ride from Penn Station). A $30-ticket gives you access to a tasting portion of each dish, live music, and a (cash) bar.

On Saturday, I’ll pick a favorite ramp recipe, and post it on The Roaming Kitchen, so even those far away can participate!

(On a personal note: The Frenchman and I visit Hudson a few times a year, and we love it. The Frenchman even proposed in Hudson, in the middle of a snowstorm! While you’re there, here are some of our favorite places to visit: Grazin’ Diner (diner food, made with fantastic, grass-fed ingredients), window shopping the antique shops up and down Warren Street, Fish & Game (where the Frenchman and I dined post-proposal. It’s a special place.), Kinderhook Farm (a little to the north of Hudson, this is my favorite farm to visit/buy eggs and meat from), Olde Hudson (a specialty grocery store), LICK (for delicious ice cream), and The Spotty Dog (it’s a bookstore AND a bar!)

I wake up abruptly, for no reason at all, in a white bed on Rue Cambon. The Frenchman is asleep, one arm thrown over his head like backstroke. He’ll have been out until small hours, drinking beers on the Canal St. Martin with friends. The room is small, all white, all teeth, except for a stained mirror occupying one wall. A single window runs to the ceiling: beyond gauze white curtains, a gray window box, a spray of fuchsia geraniums, and beyond that, the pearl light of an overcast summer day.

I brush my teeth to an episode of Downton Abbey I’ve seen several times already and then set out into the drizzling city. My first stop is G. Detou (the French love wordplay: “j’ai de tout” means “I have all”) where I sometimes buy fifty bean pouches of vanilla for a song, but today a massive bag of quality cocoa powder. I skirt along the edge of Les Halles. Paris is a city of settled beauty, but I love it for the tiny details, so easy to overlook: the almost hidden covered passages containing multitudes, the throwback, neon green detective’s sign just before the Louvre.

I take myself to Fish for lunch and sit at the bar and order Sancerre. I’ll have the white bean velouté, thin and earthy with whisker slicks of olive oil and sourdough croutons half submerged like sunken ships. I’ll eat juicy sole over tangles of purple cabbage, zucchini ribbons, fennel fronds, chervil, capers. It’s really raining now, so I order the darkest espresso there ever was and drop in a craggy raw sugar cube that I break up with a miniature, heated spoon. I read my book. The rain subsides.

The book is almost finished, and I’m downright heartbroken about, do you know what I mean? I walk to Shakespeare and Co. for a new one and there’s a line out the door; a tall, blonde, American actress is also buying books. I need some peace. I wind my way into the 3eme, so many turning, narrow streets, hushed like the inside of a maze. I want to visit the Picasso Museum, a beige square block surrounded by towering beige walls, but it’s still closed. It’s been years. I’m starting to think they’ll never reopen.

I make my way back to the hotel. I needed the day alone. In the wake of the last week, how does a person put one foot in front of the other? Evening will bring dinner with my family, and then more beers with the Frenchman’s friends. In the room, the bed’s been made, a chocolate left on each pillow. I shower in the white marble bathroom, maybe just for the luxury of donning the billowing white robe. I read some more, enmesh myself in someone else’s tragedy. Then I eat both the chocolates, and lick my fingers clean.

It’s been an odd week. On Sunday, I woke up with a sore throat that petered out by Wednesday, but then flared into a brief fever. Since, I’ve nursed a persistent stomachache that I can’t seem to shake. I’m a kaleidoscope of maladies over here. I seldom get sick, and rarely do I get so sick that I can’t work. As a result, I’ve found myself with a surplus of down time to just sit and think.

My 10-year high school reunion was a couple weekends ago. I attended with a clutch of dear friends and when I really think about that, it astonishes me–I’ve counted these women as friends and confidantes for almost half a lifetime. And although we’ve been largely separated by time and distance, we remain closely bonded by those invisible threads of shared experience and deep affection. At this point, conversations rarely need prelude–we know each other on a level that I think only happens with time.

It was wonderful to be back on campus (even if our class was relegated to the freshman boys’ dorm), to see old classmates, and visit with old teachers. Walking around campus was a minefield of half forgotten memories–names and events I’d tucked away until I returned to the physical place, until we were all together. High school was not all sunshine and roses for me; I suspect this is true for most people, but I can’t deny it was sometimes very sweet, and certainly formative. Being back, it was easy to remember the good (sledding in the dead of night) and the bad (slipping on black ice on my way back from swim practice and flashing probably the whole indoor track team).

Both nights we stayed up too late and drank a little too much, but that’s what was required. I made us a strawberry tart, a fancier version of the dessert we used to buy for birthdays from the local A&P and eat with our hands in a huddle on the dorm room floor. We followed tradition and devoured it in the most uncivilized manner possible.

On Sunday, my friend and I walked down to the dorm where we served as prefects our senior year. I didn’t expect to be as moved as I was. A current dorm parent let us into our old room–the room that is still gargantuan in my memory. There’s a picture of us at seventeen, dressed up for halloween, in the common room. (I’d forgotten that the whole dorm dressed as characters from Peter Pan that year.) A photograph I took in class, developed (underexposed) in the darkroom still hangs in the hallway.

If you had told me then that, in ten years, I would be performing maid of honor duties for her October wedding, and she mine the following May, I would have had a million questions. What would I tell my eighteen year-old self? It’s been an eventful decade. I am grateful for the milestone, and for the opportunity to celebrate the start of important, buoying friendships in the best possible way, with strawberry tart and plenty of wine. Read more »

Chocolate Cake with Rhubarb-Strawberry Compote + Crème Fraîche Cream

Swan

Did you see it, drifting, all night on the black river?
Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air,
an armful of white blossoms,
a perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned
into the bondage of its wings: a snowbank, a bank of lilies,
biting the air with its black beak?
Did you hear it, fluting and whistling
a shrill dark music, like the rain pelting trees,
like a waterfall
knifing down the black ledges?
And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds–
a white cross streaming across the sky, its feet
like black leaves, its wings like the stretching light
of the river?
And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?
And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?
And have you changed your life?

–Mary Oliver

Summer arrived in New York last weekend, suddenly and unexpectedly, like an uninvited guest. As I biked around our neighborhood, collecting ingredients for a Mother’s Day meal from more retailers than most would deem reasonable, I was struck by the outrageous greenery I think must have sprung up overnight, while we were all asleep. Asparagus just arrived at the market and I have not seen a single sugar pea, but still, all evidence suggests summer. Honestly, I feel a little gypped. I love spring, and there is a snap pea salad recipe I’ve been waiting to work out.

I have a friend who is happy. There is no other way to describe it–she is generally, genuinely, effervescently happy. Of course she is not without her troubles or hardships; when she is sad, she fully embraces sadness, a two handed hand shake. But she does not dwell in sadness or self doubt. She has a natural, easy ability to see the best in people. She is a loving friend. I often wonder–are some people born preternaturally happier than others? Or is happiness instead a conscious choice, or maybe a series of micro choices? Does it care where you’ve come from, or more about where you are going?

The Roaming Kitchen

Original Recipes and Culinary Yarns

Spring

Wedding Bucatini with Peas, Spinach and Herb Ricotta + A Tieks Giveaway

The Wedding

Strawberry Cake + an Almost Wedding

Trevisano and Blood Orange Salad with Toasted Hazelnuts, Pecorino, and Hot Honey + Ramp Fest Hudson

Radish, Snap Pea, and Burrata Salad with Chives and Lemon

Spring Vegetable Tartines with Charred Scallion Mayonnaise + Hard-Cooked Egg

Chocolate Cake with Rhubarb-Strawberry Compote + Crème Fraîche Cream