Roasted Brussels Sprouts: A Love Affair

A few years ago, when I was attending NYU, my dad visited the city and wanted to take me out to dinner. After searching for nice places to eat, we decided on Alta, a restaurant in the West Village that serves small plates. Its entrance is easily missed, as evidenced by our walking up and down the block trying to find a sign, a glimmer of hope. We sipped on fancy cocktails and sampled a few dishes. The one that surprisingly stood out most was the crispy brussels sprouts. The sprouts were fancily accompanied with apples, creme fraiche, and pistachios...

While my version is much simpler, it is easy to prepare and just as delicious as Alta's, without all the fancy accompaniments. All you do is half the brussels sprouts and toss with olive oil, salt, and freshly ground black pepper. Roast them in a 425-degree oven for 35-40, or until the outside layers are crispy and dark brown.

http://www.altarestaurant.com/?q=munchies

Apricot-glazed Chicken

I am thoroughly obsessed with sweet-and-savory dishes, and this is a great example of this style of cooking. It is important to achieve a harmonious balance; the sweetness should not be overpowering, but instead should enhance the earthiness of the meal. Experiment with the ingredients, adding a little of each at a time, until you feel the flavors compliment one another.

For the glaze, coat and massage (yes, massage) the chicken with apricot jelly, soy sauce, balsamic vinegar, toasted sesame seed oil, red pepper flakes, and minced garlic. Allow to marinate for at least 20 minutes, and then place into a 400-degree oven for about 35-40 minutes. Feel free to baste the chicken with the juices halfway through the cooking process.

While the chicken is cooking, toast sliced garlic with a little canola oil in a pan; the garlic should be golden brown--anything darker and it will taste bitter. Peel the bok choy into individual stems and add to the pan along with sliced mushrooms. Add red pepper flakes and let everything hang out and soften; I ended up adding a bit of water and covering with aluminum foil to steam the vegetables. Once the bok choy is tender, turn off the heat and drizzle with soy sauce and a very small amount of toasted sesame seed oil (the stuff is potent, so just a little will suffice).

Here is the bok choy getting a little heat:

The simple ingredients took on an exotic flavor once everything came together...

...and the marinade was so delicious, I wanted to drink it with a spoon...and I did...

Lettuce Talk Beer...Bread

I was first introduced to this stuff when one of my best friend's mom gave it to me for Christmas. Well, she gave me the dry ingredients, filled in a big beer bottle which came with a church key (bottle opener). All I had to do was dump out the ingredients, add a bottle of beer, and bake, and it was fantastic. (I attributed most of its goodness to the fact that my hands and brain had little to do with its preparation.)

About a week ago, nearly a year after my first encounter with this bread, I had a conversation with an eccentric Trader Joe's cashier who raved about her homemade beer bread, and how simple it is to make from scratch. I am not a particularly good baker, nor do I particularly enjoy baking, but I figured that I would try it on my own, without the aid and convenience of the gift I had received last year.

I proudly followed the recipe from the link below, but chose to forgo the optional glaze.
http://foodiefarmgirl.blogspot.com/2005/11/beer-bread-update-whole-wheat-version.html
I used a 12-ounce bottle of Palm, a Belgian ale, and used water to make up the remainder of the required liquid.

The result: a very crunchy outer layer that shelters a tender and moist interior. The beer flavor is present, but not overwhelming, which may be partly due to the fairly mild selection I used. Next time I think I'll use an Oktoberfest beer and add raisins. And the time after that I will use a darker beer and add herbs and perhaps some cheese, as the original author of this recipe suggests. I guess what I'm trying to say is that it is worth trying, and absolutely worth experimenting with, this recipe.

Roasted Vegetable Sandwich

There's really not much to say about this meal, except that it was one of the easiest things I've made, and I can't take credit for its conception. This sandwich and its close cousins finds its way onto many menus in cafes across the city. I shamelessly stole the idea and made it in my own apartment, paying a lot less than I would in my local gourmet sandwich shop.

Slice zucchini, eggplant, and red peppers. Toss with a little olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt, and black pepper, and place in a 425-degree oven for about 35 minutes, or until tender.



Spoon the vegetables onto toasted chiabatta bread, dollop with goat cheese (I used garlic-herb), and you're good to go.



If you are serving more than one person, I recommend assembling the sandwich on one big hunk of bread and then slicing into individual portions.



You could easily expand on this sandwich by creating exotic condiments, adding more intriguing vegetables, or seasoning with various herbs and spices, but why? It defeats the purpose of this sandwich: to be healthy, tasty, and ridiculously easy.

We Meet Anthony Bourdain

Yes, that's right--we did!

I can be a bit of a storyteller, but I'm going to make this as quick and to-the-point as I possibly can so that I can get to the best part: the pictures.

The event: Anthony Bourdain gets interviewed by Frank Bruni, author and former restaurant critic for the New York Times. I buy the tickets from StubHub after they are sold out and pay too much for them, but I know it'll be worth it. I invite my mom and dad.

The pre-party: Mom and Dad come to Manhattan, we get drinks and appetizers (I'm now fully obsessed with fried pickle spears) and head to the TimesCenter Stage where we wait in line to be seated, while playing Eye Spy. We drink (complimentary!) wine.

The main event: Anthony is just how he appears on camera, both regarding looks and attitude. I feel like squealing with delight the entire time. The intimate venue made it seem as though we were all hanging out in a very large living room, listening to one great storyteller.

The immediate aftermath: I buy one of his books (for reasons unknown, none of us brought any of his books that we already own), wait in line, shake his hand, feel like an idiot because I'm trying to talk but it's just nonsense, have him sign the book and tell him that the autograph "better be good because it's going to be a tattoo."

The after-party: More (complimentary!) wine, then a big dinner and more drinks, and lots of good conversation with two amazing people. Well worth every moment of anticipation and penny paid for the tickets. One of the best nights of my life, and I'm so happy to have shared it with my parents, who appreciate and adore him as much as I do!

The pictures:

Frank Bruni, left, Anthony Bourdain, right


Mr. Bourdain!

Here I am, with my mom behind me, pointing at my dad, the temporary paparazzo

!!!!!!YAY!!!!!!

Marinara and Meatballs

A few weeks ago, knowing that the summer was coming to an end, I became obsessed with tomatoes. Winter tomatoes just make me mad. At my local greenmarket, a plethora of tomatoes were being offered. I sought out a four-pound bag of plum tomatoes for only $4 ($1 a pound! Amazing!) and headed home to make a slow-roasted marinara sauce.

I quartered the tomatoes and placed them in a dutch oven with a bunch of garlic cloves, a good glug of extra virgin olive oil, salt, and lots of freshly ground black pepper.

I stirred the sauce every once in a while and towards the end, added fresh torn basil. After hanging out in a 375-degree oven for about 1 1/2 hours, this is what it looked like:

I made beef meatballs using 96/4 ground beef. The first number refers to the percent of muscle, or lean meat; the second indicates the percent of fat. The higher the first number, the less fat in the meat. This is the leanest form of beef I have ever seen (available at Trader Joe's), and since I thought the deep flavor of beef would contrast nicely with the fresh roasted tomatoes, I opted for the red meat instead of ground turkey breast, which is what I typically use for meatballs.

Combine the ground meat with oregano, basil (you can use dried or fresh herbs), minced garlic, minced onion, salt, and pepper. Roll into any size you prefer, and saute in a small amount of oil until browned on the outside and cooked through.

Spoon the sauce over the pasta, add meatballs, sprinkle with parmigiano reggiano cheese, and you have yourself a great way to use up and enjoy all of those summer tomatoes!

Homemade Cheese Sauce

Remember how I mentioned that it is finally cold in Brooklyn? Well now, there's a wind advisory to boot. When thinking of what to make for dinner, all I could think of was: cheese, warm, cream, cozy. Just words. But they came together nicely to create a hearty dinner on a chilly night.

Cook up some turkey bacon until crispy. Make a cream sauce, which is the foundation for a cheese sauce: make a roux, add milk, season accordingly, and allow to thicken, stirring frequently (refer to the post on September 3, 2008: Mid-week Indulgence for details). Now add the cheese of your choice to the sauce; I used asiago for its tang and nutty flavor. Stir in frozen chopped spinach, and crumble in the turkey bacon. Now you have made a Spinach and Bacon Asiago Cheese Sauce! (I capitalized the letters to sneakily make it seem like an official recipe.)

Serve this over whole wheat pasta and you've got yourself a meal!

Brown Rice Pudding

There I was, hungry...at midnight. Craving something sweet; there was nothing.

Except...

Some left over brown rice that I had purchased from my local Chinese takeout place and used for a quick weeknight meal. And milk. And there's always sugar and cinnamon in the apartment.

An epiphone: I remember my mom telling me she has been trying to perfect a rice pudding recipe. I figured that there had to be a way to concoct a quick rice pudding that would fill the hole in my belly and satisfy my sweet teeth (I do believe that all my teeth--not just one--are sweet teeth).

A brief Google search brought me to this recipe: http://www.cooks.com/rec/view/0,1942,148165-254201,00.html

Everything starts in a pot without any heat. Once all the ingredients are mixed together, then turn the stove on. I didn't measure any of the ingredients--just flopped them into the pan and stopped adding when everything looked and smelled right. I used golden raisins because, well, I just think they taste better than the darker ones. Forget beating the egg white and folding it into the cooled rice; I skipped this step, ate it warm and it was creamy, sweet, and chewy. Yum.