Tag Archives: Food

Bring Back the 3-Martini Lunch; Porterhouse Included

25 Friday Apr 2014

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steak and martinis

BY JULIE SEYLER

For years and years I battled my weight.

All food choices were based on calories, but now calorie count no longer drives the game. These days, it’s about eating politically correct. I recently went to a business lunch at a restaurant known for its steak with four colleagues. Three ordered salmon. These middle-aged men were limiting their beef intake due to the artery-clogging potential of the medium.

I felt guilty ordering my rare filet mignon, but completely gratified when I noticed that each salmon- eater thought nothing of piling on the mashed potatoes, which no doubt were slathered in butter! (Although the latest of the latest studies came out with a report that maybe red meat is not so bad for you after all.)

Whatever. Because if arteries, filled with free-floating globules that cause clog ups, aren’t torturing your brain, there’s always wheat to worry about. It seems nothing is as bad for you as food made with the white stuff. As a carbo-queen, and lover of pasta not made with rice, spelt or ancient whole grains, I have reconsidered eating spaghetti for breakfast. As much as I love slurping up a tangled mass of pasta coated with olive oil, lemon, pepperocini, salt, and parmesan cheese at 7 a.m., these days, that image is replaced with a dance of numbers that dictate soaring blood glucose levels. I nobly turn my attention to a bowl of protein-rich and calcium-studded yogurt. (Unlike Lois, I cannot imagine eating sardines topped with avocados, olives, and mayo for breakfast.)

Cheese! I love cheese, but Geez Louise, the fat that courses through a melting brie is enough to freeze the veins.

Then there’s the new culprit in town: GLUTEN. It’s the devil behind every ache, joint pain and an inert libido. But don’t fear. The options for gluten-free and tasteless dough just keep expanding.

Honestly, the scientific evidence behind a healthy heart is destroying the lustful pleasure of food. A prime rib on the bone with a baked potato on the side drowning in a pool of butter and sour cream has always been a decadent treat, now it’s decadent, and potentially murderous.

Easter Recap: The Chicken Came Before the Egg

21 Monday Apr 2014

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hot chicken

Hot stuff (kinda).

BY LOIS DESOCIO

Yesterday, I tried to take chicken to the other side.

For decades, my Easter-dinner tradition has been to make a different deviled egg. It’s the first thing I do. I’ve taken the traditional route (mushy yolk in egg white), the non-traditional (pieces of egg white on top of a molded mound of yolk), topped them with nuts and raisins, and sprinkled throughout with shrimp and garlic. Everybody expects them.

But since traditional to me also means behaving non-traditionally, and since I am also hot – as in spicy – as in nothing can be too peppery, piquant or throat-closing for me (Make my nose run! Flood my eyes!), this year, I had to put my eggs aside, because I spent two days, and most of Easter morning, making, and ultimately, tweaking, Peaches Hothouse Extra Hot Chicken from the “notoriously spicy” Peaches Hothouse in Brooklyn.

Brine martini

Tastes like chicken.

The recipe is a hat trick for me. It has salt (homemade brine), crunch (it’s fried), and a challenge – smoked ghost chili powder. (Warning: DO NOT do what I did, and think, ooh brine! what a great martini this would make. It doesn’t.)

Ghost-chili powder is made from the Bhut Jolokia pepper which, until 2011, when it was trumped by the Trinidad Scorpion pepper, was the hottest pepper in the world, according to the Guinness Book of World Records.

Pepper hotness is rated on Scoville Heat Units. Tabasco – 5,000 units. Jalapeno – 8,000 units. Habanero – 350,000 units. Ghost Chili – over 1 million units. (There’s a skull on the bottle.)

What’s not to love?

But ghost chili is as elusive as it is fiery. Apparently, I would have to head south – Nashville; east – Brooklyn; southeast – India; or to Amazon (.com) to find it.

So the Hothouse recipe, which was a secret until The New York Times ran it on March 19, has remained a secret in my house because, given my short, prep-window, I had to tweak.

I substituted a combo of smoked hot paprika (The Times recommended this) and extra cayenne. The cayenne and hot paprika throat-sizzle was not the skull-and-crossbones Easter Sunday dinner I had hoped for, but no doubt, some secret “Hallelujahs!” were whispered by my always-open-to-my-culinary-whims family, who range from 0 (my mom) to 1 million (my son, who douses all his food with hot sauce) on the hotness scale. Next year.

And I was tweaked by guilt. After the chicken, came some deviled eggs. I did a last-minute scramble and put together a tame, traditional, batch, which made for a superb, non-traditional, after-Easter, breakfast-parade of chicken and eggs.An After-Easter Parade.

I Mixed it Up: Carrots and Olives

28 Friday Mar 2014

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carrots and bl olives

BY JULIE SEYLER

Is anyone as passionate about carrots as I am? I eat carrots every day. Sometimes after a full meal out, I still crave a carrot. I love them with cheddar cheese, tuna fish, and always in salads.

The other night I was really hungry, and there was no food in the house except a bag of carrots and black olives. I decided to pair them. I peeled and sliced five carrots, combined them with pitted black nicoise olives, added a smidgeon of olive oil, a pinch of salt and some ground black pepper. It was delicious. Then I remembered we had Marie’s Super Chunk Blue Cheese Dressing in the fridge. My low cal/low carb snack morphed into the equivalent of a hot fudge sundae, but was sublime.

After I concocted this delectable sidebar to a meal, I looked online to see if there were any official recipes for a black olive and carrot salad. Its a natural pairing. On the website Myrecipes.com, the recipe called for feta cheese and an olive oil and lemon dressing, so the second time I made it that way and it was way more poignant than with the blue cheese dressing. It’s definitely on the menu for my next party!
mix with dressing.

 

On Meat and Men: I’ve Caved

06 Thursday Feb 2014

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loves meat 3BY LOIS DESOCIO

I am woman. Give me meat.

This girly-girl has recently gone Paleolithic. It started at a recent birthday dinner. It was at a steakhouse. As a lover of everything about a steakhouse (the dark wood, the long bar, the abundance of men) except steak, I’ve always been the odd woman out by ordering fish or pasta.

“Because you only order steak at a steakhouse,” has been the retort to my comments on the badly turned-out fish, or the limp and over-laden pasta that is usually standard fare at a steakhouse.

So that night, for the first time (I believe ever), I caved in, and proclaimed from my new “What-the-hey-I’m-59,” mountaintop:

“I’ll have the Blackened Rib Eye!” (Smothered in onions, mushrooms, and a Jack Daniels demi-glaze.)

It was good – good enough. But what struck me that night, and has stuck with me a month later, is what didn’t stick with me that night – the puffy, sloth-like aftermath of my usual order of a loaf of bread with a bowl of pasta, or anything with a glob of melted cheese on top.

I ate half the steak, and all of the accompanying broccoli. I got full fast, and stayed that way until the next day. (No late night, pasta-leftover, round-two in front of the TV.)

egg meatSo now I’m on a roll. I recently took the load of leftover sausage that was in my freezer from Christmas, put on Dean Martin (whose voice makes me cave), and hacked and clawed the casing from the sausage, pummeled and pounded it into a circle, mushed it together with the foraged-for-and-handpicked-from-the-local-market (which I walked to) cremini mushrooms – and baked it with an egg on top. The recipe is in line with the revival of the Paleo, or Caveman, diet).

And since it’s pretty much a done deal that we all have a ” … little bit of Neanderthal in us …“, I see nothing amiss about replacing my oatmeal, or leftover-quinoa breakfast, with a big turkey drumstick.

turkey leg

Breakfast.

So my life-long sidestep around meat may have taken a turn. In spite of descending from a family that loves liver, I’ve never craved a mutton chop like I do a potato chip. I’ve never said, “Yum,” at the sight of a blood-red Porterhouse. Meat is not crunchy enough for me, nor as consoling as a carbohydrate. But now, I’ve learned that the beauty of meat lies in its ability to satiate with just a small portion.

I now feel leaner than ever. I’ve trimmed most of the fat that had inched-up and stuck to my middle after the Christmas carbo-overload.

And, to be honest, a T-Bone is actually more in sync with the primitive, inner me; that cave-man girl. The one who doesn’t crave a knight in shining armor, but whose appetite has always been whetted by a hulk of a man who grunts just to her, and drags her off into his man cave to share his meat.

Coq au Vin: Blanched, Boiled, and ‘Blueprinted’ Below

21 Tuesday Jan 2014

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The kitchen

The kitchen.

BY JULIE SEYLER

Like many people living in an apartment, my kitchen is tiny. The maximum usable portion of counter space is a 26″ wide x 12″ rectangle. Cooking anything with more than three ingredients requires premeditation, creative juggling, and a suspension of anticipated frustration to deal with how to squeeze all the ingredients into this modest slice of granite, and still have room to knead, chop or dice as the case may be.

I usually stick with the tried and true simplicity of pasta, salads and soups. But once in a while, an occasion arises that calls for me to conquer the kitchen dimensions, and sally forth into the field of a “gourmet” meal.

Rolf's. 1.4.14

Rolf’s. 1.4.14

Recently I used Lois’s visit to Rolf’s, our favorite place to raise a glass, as a reason to go beyond my normal repertoire.
I wanted something I could prepare the day before that would accumulate depth during its overnight stay in the refrigerator. Lois is not a picky eater, so whether I served a sweetbread stew or lasagna with chickpeas and pancetta, she would be fine. It is me that needs the more traditional fare.

I decided on a Coq au Vin. Relying 90% on Ina Garten, and 10% on Julia Child (especially her tip to blanch the bacon in boiling water for about 8 minutes to quell its ability to overwhelm all other flavors), I started preparing the morning before. I chopped the carrots and garlic; laid out the cognac, opened the wine (took a sip), peeled 20 pearl onions (what a pain), and sliced the mushrooms BEFORE I blanched the bacon. Then while the bacon was crisping, I salt and peppered the chicken. I was so organizd, and operated with such efficiency, I kept a photographic diary:

Pearl onions, carrots, onion, garlic, red wine, mushrooms, cognac

Pearl onions, carrots, onion, garlic, red wine, mushrooms, cognac.

Salt and pepper chicken

Salt and pepper chicken.

Brown the chicken

Browning the chicken.

It starts to come together

It starts to come together.

The finishing touch: pearl onions and mushrooms

The finishing touch: pearl onions and mushrooms.

After it was cooked, I let it cool completely and then put it in the refrigerator.

Sunday morning, I set the table. Since I never married, I never acquired that initial set of matching dinnerware. Instead my plates, bowls, dishes, cups, table linens and napkin rings have been bought and bargained for from countries I have visited. To me, they are the best souvenirs ever because they bring me back to a time and place.

When we got home from Rolf’s Sunday evening, I warmed up the coq au vin by bringing it to a full boil, and then letting it simmer for about 20 minutes. Voila! It was was ready. We sat down to a mismatched dinner table set with a tablecloth from Cairo, Egypt, a wooden trivet from Ecuador, dinner plates from Buenos Aires, Zanzibar and Barcelona, and napkin rings purchased in Tanzania, India, France, and Guatemala. As it is said – nostalgia, and good food shared with great friends is manna for the soul. Bon Appetit!

Dinner is served

Dinner is served.

It’s Gonna Snow! Get the Bread and Milk!

15 Wednesday Jan 2014

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snow cravings bob

It’s all about the white.

BY BOB SMITH

What is it about snow that makes people crave bread, milk, and eggs? Whenever the forecast in the New York/New Jersey area calls for more than a dusting of snow, the supermarkets fill up with frenzied shoppers “stocking up” on bread, milk, and eggs. Is this really necessary?

Does everyone plan to sit out the snowstorm munching on egg sandwiches and glasses of milk? Or are they going to bake cookies with the milk and eggs? Then why the bread? And why no run on baking flour? Why isn’t everyone out there buying chicken, yams, and asparagus? At least you can make a decent complete meal out of those.

People also fill up their cars with gasoline before a storm – even though they’ll do little or no driving if there’s a significant snowfall. Does it make them feel more secure knowing that rounded lump buried in the driveway under three feet of snow has enough fuel to take the vehicle to Cleveland and back – if only you could drive it down the block?

In any event, when was the last time it snowed so much you were trapped in your house and couldn’t dig your way out to the store before your existing, everyday, supply of bread, milk and eggs ran out or went bad? Even the worst blizzard in New Jersey is cleared away, and the roads are passable within a day – or at most a day and a half – of the last flakes falling. Are people afraid the supply trucks can’t get to the supermarket after a big storm, and our local quota of bread, milk and eggs will dry up so we’d better stock up while we can? But when has that ever happened? Not in my lifetime.

I’ll tell you what has happened, though: my local supermarket runs out of bread, milk, and eggs just before a big snowstorm because of all the panic buying. Or at least they run out of my favorite brands – I’ve been reduced to buying skim instead of 1% or 2% milk, wheat instead of good old nonnutritious white bread, and those weird brown eco-eggs that cost twice as much as regular white ones.

That’s it! It’s a white fetish! In anticipation of the world being covered in snow, everyone wants to be sure they have an ample supply of white foods. And bread, milk, and eggs just naturally top that list. White rice, shredded coconut, and lemon sherbet can’t be far behind. Heck, if snow were brown there’d be a run on chocolate, Brazil nuts, and day-old ground beef.

There isn’t a big snow event in the New Jersey forecast for the next few days, so we can all rest easy. For now. But when it all comes down, don’t get caught without your stash – be ready to white-up and hunker down for the long haul. All two days of it.

Bursting (Pants Included) Through the Holidays

10 Friday Jan 2014

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the holidays

BY BOB SMITH

Okay, it’s over. I’m 10 pounds overweight, feeling miserable, and resolving, like 29 million other Americans, to fight off the ravages of the recent holidays before (or rather, as) I bust out of my pants. I’ve got to at least put a dent in it before I have to put on a bathing suit again. And that could be as early as next month if I get my wish to go to Florida for the second half of this ugly New Jersey winter.

I admit it – I’m a victim of that giant end-of-year holiday “Hallothanksmaseveday,” which starts with the candy and costume ads on October 1, and runs right through to the blowing of the last noisemaker early on the morning of January 1. Four holidays are telescoped into a dizzying three-month orgy of candy, turkey, pumpkin pie, cookies, sugarplums (whatever they are), hams, yams, nog, logs (cheese and Yule), lights on trees, gifts galore, champagne, shrimp, long brunches, and tall Bloody Marys.

We’ve now entered a brief no-holiday season. Sure, there’s Martin Luther King Day and football playoffs and the Super Bowl in early February, but otherwise, the stretch between New Year’s and mid-February is relatively holiday-free. That brief respite looks like my best chance to get a serious start on losing the holiday fat before the parade of celebrations begins again.

Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, Mother’s Day, Easter, Father’s Day, Memorial Day, and the start of summer, followed by the Fourth of July – that covers February to mid-year. August and September are relatively light, with only the traditional Labor Day lamentation of summer’s end to break up the monotony. But throw in the occasional birthday, anniversary party, or wedding, and the summer can be full of overindulgence opportunities, too.

Then it’s October 1, and the holiday marketing machine cranks up “Hallothanksmaseveday” all over again. What a life.

Happy New Year!

What to Do With That Leftover Christmas Cranberry Cheese Log …

27 Friday Dec 2013

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bread pudding

This is not a Christmas Cranberry Cheese Log.

BY LOIS DESOCIO

… Wait. Cheese logs are so last year.

On December 27, 2012, I was in the midst of writing about how that “round of goat cheese encased in smooshed cranberries – a Yule Log,” tastes better than it looks.

How, I put it out year after year, and “I usually wind up being the only one eating it.” And, how much of my cooking on December 26 and December 27 usually has that leftover log in it.

“Green beans. And sherry. And cheese log! Oh my!!”

I nixed the article – no one cares about cheese logs. (Unlike cheese balls – which, perplexingly, remain beloved.)

So this year, I did not say cheese when I shopped for my Christmas-Day feast. A first. My cheese-obsession (and all that you can do with a leftover log of it), was usurped by my newfound, and really old, pressure cooker, and all that you can do with it.

But the Apple Bread Pudding with Cranberries that I got from the Fissler Pressure Cooker lady in Williams Sonoma recently, became my 2013 cheese log – it was mostly passed-up and, therefore, left-over.

C’mon, people – it’s not a fruitcake.

But a concoction that is binded by apples, oranges, cranberries and eggs. And then encased and interwoven throughout with white bread, butter, vanilla, cinnamon and cream – all pressured and steamed into a puddingy bliss – yields a perfect foil for a second go-round. Especially if you leave it out on the counter for a day. (I did for two.)

Here goes:

Take a section of the pudding, and shape it into a small log for two:

log-shaped pudding

Fry up two to four pieces of good-quality pancetta:

fry pancetta

Drain, set side. Then sauté only the flat sides of the pudding in the pancetta grease, on low, until browned, and warm in the middle. Be careful – you don’t want hard, crunchy, pudding (yet):

frying the pudding

Cut pancetta, while still warm, into strips, and make a lattice around the sautéed pudding. Drizzle with honey, and top with Marcona almonds:

marcona almonds

Serve with Prosecco or Champagne. It’s especially delicious with a Mimosa.
Just hold the cheese.

Intense Under Pressure: Pasta

13 Friday Dec 2013

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Presto cooker

BY LOIS DESOCIO

Ten or so years ago, my mom gave me her old pressure cooker. The Presto Cook-Master Cooker Model 104 is from the 1960s or 1970s. My mom couldn’t remember. Some research didn’t provide date-details, but on eBay, it’s described as “Vintage.”

It’s been sitting, dormant, in the back of a cabinet, an hours drive away, for the past ten years. No interest on my part. I have a crock pot. I have a wok. What exactly does a pressure cooker do? Isn’t it more of an appliance? Like a microwave? It’s an obsolete, all-aluminum (therefore toxic) dinosaur. I don’t even remember any childhood meals from the thing.

But I don’t toss out the old easily.

Last week in Williams-Sonoma, there was a pressure-cooker revival going on in the back. Equipped with a 2013 Fissler Vitaquick Pressure Cooker, a chef churned out Rotini in Tomato Sauce in 15 minutes. A one-pot pasta.

“Unfortunately, nobody uses pressure cookers any more,” the chef said to the crowd.

“I have one from the ’60s or ’70s,” I said.

She told me it probably wouldn’t work anymore. I needed a Fissler.

That’s all I needed to hear. I drove the hour a few days later, and picked up my pitted, aluminum, old and dirty Presto with the broken handle. I brought it home.

presto ingredients

They all go to pot at once.

I set out to pick up the short list of ingredients – ground beef, onion, garlic, oil, twirly pasta, tomato sauce, mozzarella cheese. That’s it. (Because I couldn’t decide what kind of mozzarella to get, I ended up forgetting it altogether. So I used the Gouda I had on hand. Cheese is cheese – especially when steam-softened.)

I sautéed the onions and garlic in canola oil, then browned the beef, and then I got to throw everything else in all at once. Even the dry pasta: Dry pasta

I clamped it shut, turned up the fire, and stood back.

Presto cooking

The hard part is not being able to see what is going on inside. I wanted to peek after 10 minutes, but the lid was shaking, and the seams were bubbling; hissing; gurgling. My old Presto did not have the “Euromatic Safety Valve,” or the “Residual Pressure Block,” or the “Auto-locking Lid and Visual Indicator” with “Automatic Steam Release,” that comes with the new Fissler.

All safety features that, to me, squash entertainment and merrymaking out of the whole undertaking. Nope – my no-indicator, nozzle-spinning, vibrating, silver-studded noodle heater may have been one step away from exploding. It could have poked my eye out. I could taste the danger!

I gave the whole process 15 minutes. When it started whistling like a locomotive, I turned off the flame. I couldn’t open it. I ran it under cold water, and …

Presto done

… a potful of superlative. Pure with flavor; vivid with smell. The burnt, black residue on the bottom offered a mouthful of smoke; a tang. Like real food.

The new Fissler is stainless steel with an aluminum base, and sells for $300. My vintage Presto is all aluminum, thank you!, and is priceless.

Check out the recipe here.

Leftovers

29 Friday Nov 2013

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leftovers

Turkey was served …
turkey served

… and devoured:

the turkey was eaten

The table was a mess, and even though, most likely, everyone was stuffed to the gills …
after the meal is over

… room was made for pie:
pecan pie

And today, leftovers for breakfast …