10/28/15

Yay for mothers who cook you a wonderful dinner. Chicken soup, cabbage-carrot-shrimp salad, dates stuffed with sausage and manchego, then wrapped in bacon(!!!!). I will be making those dates when my kitchen returns. And for dessert grilled cinnamon buns. Sadly, Carter took a liking to those so I had to share.

10/27/15

I ordered takeout.

10/26/15

Green-chili and chicken stew with white beans, from Homesick Texan. Good, after some flavor tweaking (more cilantro, more salt, lime juice). This was a meal by itself, so we just had some chips with it. May be the last decent meal for a little while since this happened this morning:

Goodbye wallpaper! Jason won't miss my whining about you!

10/25/15

There is not much to say about eggplant parm except the whole family loves it, which is good because I made a LOT.

10/24/15

Bubbe's 90th birthday in Stamford. Delicious Italian food; long day of travel.

10/23/15

Dinner at Jen and John's: return of the bo ssam! I did it completely by the book this time, and the results were much better. I started with about an 8 pound, bone-in pork shoulder, dry-brined it overnight, and roasted it for about 7 hours. I also made the accompaniments (ginger-scallion sauce and a spicy chili sauce), and they were so worth it. I will definitely make this again

10/22/15

Pasta with tomato sauce and sausage (tried out the slow cooker, which worked well), plus Jason made a loaf of bread. It was all great, but I was distracted by my various baking projects: TKOs, round two: better cookie, but I completely overbeat the ganache and broke it; cider donuts (why bother? Go to Atkins) and croissants.  I started them Wednesday night, laminated them on Thursday and baked them Friday morning (half cheese, half chocolate).  They taste pretty good, but aren't as flaky as I could hope. Maybe another round of folding next time? It would be fairly easy to make these over a weekend.

Shaping them was not my strong point.

10/21/15

Take-out from Mom's House, which was a little bittersweet, since it was good and cheap, but they are discontinuing take-out there. I will have to perfect my own tofu and eggplant.

10/20/15

Black bean soup, roasted acorn squash, more naan. The beans in the soup were slightly underdone, but otherwise all was good.

10/19/15

Roasted chicken schwarma, from the NYT. I felt very brave making this with boneless chicken thighs, which I was pretty sure I don't like. Followed the recipe exactly, and served the chicken with Trader Joe's naan (I'll make my own on a non-work day), cucumbers, some zhug, a yogurt-tahini sauce, scallions and jalapenos. This was a VERY big success. It turns out that I do like chicken thighs, and Carter loved it. He said it was the best thing I ever made! I mean, he really raved about it. It was gratifying.

10/18/15

Roasted tofu, rice, broccoli. I topped the tofu with sauteed ginger, garlic and scallions, and provided sriracha and soy sauce at the table.
(Nobody seemed particularly excited by this dinner, but it was quick).

10/17/15

Dinner with Jennie and David; bread, ice cream and leek fritters. OK, the ice cream itself (butterscotch with brownies) was good, but the recipe for brownies in the cookbook (Van Leeuwen Artisan Ice Cream. Also the source of the chocolate ice cream of a couple of weeks ago) was terrible. It was fine mixed into the ice cream, but almost inedible alone. I was doing a bunch of things at the time, so maybe I screwed up? The leek fritters are always good, except that I didn't clean my cilantro well enough so I detected some grit in some of them. Served them with a spicy sour cream thrown together from various sources.

10/16/15

A flurry of cooking. Dinner was chicken breasts with tomato, capers and white wine, from the NYT. Good but not incredible. I threw in some spinach so I wouldn't have to make another vegetable, and served it with leftover plain spaghetti. I also made a shoo-Fly pie, from "First Prize Pies". It is very nice, except that it calls for a sort of crumble to be sprinkled on top, which is just flour, sugar and spices. It really doesn't add anything to the pie. If I make it again, I will rub in a little cold butter to make it into an actual crumble. I kept looking at the recipe to see if I was missing something.

10/15/15

Crocker Farm Open House from 6-8 necessitated picking up a pizza on the way home, and watching the Great British Baking show.

10/14/15

Dinner at my mom's (delicious soup). We brought some oreo cookies a la Thomas Keller. Nice: a bit salty and the filling could have been a bit firmer but basically successful.

10/13/15

Carter's choice: burritos. Added guacamole and some leftover squash for crunch/nutrients.

10/12/15

Pasta with lemon, bacon and pine nuts, from the NYT. You toss pasta with parsley, butter, parmesan and lemon juice and zest, then serve bacon and pine nuts (I used walnuts) at the table to add in. I also added some sauteed summer squash (but peas would have been good, too). I thought this tasted perfect, and hope I can replicate it! Just lemony enough, and the bacon and nuts added a nice crunch.

Jason's picture. Not much better than mine.

10/11/15

Staggered off the Megabus and heated up a couple of Trader Joe's tamales (and ate a few of my precious stock of See's chocolates). Thank you Jessica for an awesome weekend getaway!

Day and night views from the hotel

10/10/15

Lower East Side restaurant crawl: we started the night at Empellon; we sat at the bar and had pistachio guacamole (as good as I remembered) and 7 salsas (too diverse to recall, but the green one was delicious and the spiciest one was really quite spicy). We also had some queso (meh) and a hot dog taco that we don't know why we ordered. I guess I thought that it was such a dumb idea that it must actually be delicious. If I could do that meal over again, I would skip the taco and queso and get the crab and mango instead. Then we headed over to Motorino for Neapolitan pizza. There was a projected hour wait, so we walked a few blocks over to Milk Bar for dessert. The line was quite long but moved quickly, and as we ordered, we got a call that our table was ready. So we shoved our cookies and Crack Pie into our bags and headed back to Motorino. It was tiny and very very crowded in there! We shared a tomato-burrata salad (fine) and a margherita pie. The pizza was nice, but not as good as Keste, we agreed. I had originally thought we might try Momofuku Noodle Bar, too, but we were too full, so we grabbed a cab back uptown. How was Milk Bar? Sadly, I found the cookies to be merely sweet. The Crack Pie was very, very sweet. Oddly, I found my version of the cornflake cookies to be better. Maybe these desserts skew younger?
I will get to Momofuku someday, I swear!

ps The TKO cookies from Bouchon are, by contrast, sweet, and a little bitter and absolutely delicious.

10/9/15

In NYC with Jessica. We started the evening with drinks and snacks (truffle-parmesan popcorn and crudites) in the hotel's fancy lounge area. Then we headed down to Union Square Cafe for a last meal in their current location. We shared scallop crudo (just OK) and a burrata with greens and these delicious garlic croutons. Then we shared a pasta with broccoli rabe and cod (sounds odd but I think it was our favorite dish of the night). Jessica had a steak with marrow mashed potatoes: the meatiest, richest mashed potatoes I have ever tried. I had swordfish with a fava puree, and this surprisingly wonderful quinoa salad with olivata and cherry tomatoes. I could have eaten a bowl of that alone. Cheese and dessert (chocolate cake) turned out to be superfluous. I hope the new USC location is just as good.

10/8/15

Grilled chicken marinated in labneh, onions and garlic, plus rice, roasted caulflower and more zhug. The chicken was from "My Lebanese Kitchen" and had a really nice tangy, onion-y flavor. Although it was tricky grilling it in the the near darkness of the porch.

10/7/15

Pizza with my folks (yay!). I brought a nutmeg cake which was a bit dry. I am afraid I may have overcooked it.

10/6/15

Made what Serious Eats deemed "The Best Carne Asada". I can't speak to that, although it was pretty good, especially the red chile salsa. I think it may have been a little better with skirt steak, but flank steak was all the store had. Served with roasted delicata squash and black beans. I think the marinade and presentation would be just as good with chicken.

That squash is just looming.

10/5/15

French toast, cottage cheese and bacon again, at Carter's request. At least we didn't have to make the challah this time.

10/4/15

Roasted tofu, rice, broccoli.

10/3/15

Dinner with Jennie and David: chocolate ice cream and angel food cake. Fine.  I only made chocolate ice cream because someone returning an ice cream cookbook swore it was the best ever. I will try some other recipes from the book, because it isn't chocolate ice cream's fault that I prefer vanilla. Also, it is really best straight out of the ice cream maker.

10/2/15

I finally had some some free time in which to cook, so I made: sweet and sour baked eggplant with pressed ricotta (from Frankies Spuntino), marinated mushrooms, antipasti and an apple pie. Jason contributed bread to this tasty meal.

10/1/15

Amazing meal at Ibiza with my parents. I can't remember every dish, but we had patatas bravas (crispy, spicy and delicious), tuna crudo, cheeses and fig paste, calamari (which I actually liked!), tiny little steak sandwiches, pulled pork and more. Hope we can go back again.

9/30/15

Since Carter and I were dining alone, we (scandalously) watched TV during dinner. Cream of pea soup, some leftover boreks, naan and hummus.

preppy pea soup