Celery Root and Apple Soup

I have a new farmers' market resolution.  I want to pick up one new ingredient that we have never cooked with each week and figure out how to cook it.  Last weekend my new ingredient was celery root.  When I picked up the celery root I had grand ideas of soup or puree.  I feel like celery root puree is everywhere in NYC restaurants.  I didn't realize when I picked up the celery root just how much it would taste and smell like celery.  For some reason I expected it to be sweeter and less celery-flavored.  Had I known that celery root tasted like celery I probably would have picked up a different vegetable given that Alex isn't exactly a fan of celery.   And after prepping this soup I am not sure that Alex will ever voluntarily cook with celery root again - it is kind of a beast to peel and chop up.  Oops.  This weekend I picked up sunchokes (aka Jerusalem artichokes) so that will be our next experiment.

When everything was said and done, this was not our favorite soup ever.  I... liked it.  I thought that when you got a spoonful with the bacon it was pretty tasty.  Bites without bacon were less so.  Without the bacon I felt like the soup lacked depth of flavor.  Alex was on the fence.  Actually, saying that he was on the fence is sugar coating it a little.  Without the bacon he thought the soup had the texture and flavor of baby food.  Once I realized how much the celery root smelled like celery I knew I was fighting a losing battle.  Expecting Alex to love a soup with celery root as the main component was a bit optimistic on my part.  Oh well. Better luck next time.

Recipe after the jump!

Mesclun Salad with Apples and Warm Duck Bacon Vinaigrette

After a really long and difficult few weeks at work, I was dying for home cooking.  The months of November and December have been really bad for home-cooked meals (which I'm sure you can figure out just by looking at the scarcity of posts).  We had a home-cooked meal on Thanksgiving (and my last home-cooked meal before that was the Saturday prior to Thanksgiving), then I went to Hawaii.  Saturday, December 3 was my next home-cooked meal and the last one before tonight's dinner.  Let's just say that I have been eating a lot of takeout and my body has been seriously craving a return to normalcy.  More specifically, I was dying for some salad and some freshness - a welcome counterpoint to all of the fairly mediocre meals I have been eating at my desk for the past two weeks.  I just really needed some greens.  And what better way to get some greens in my diet than to hit the farmers' market and grab some from Windfall Farms.  Actually when I first walked up to the stand I thought it was 5 lbs of Dirt - the farm at the farmer's market up by us that we hit every Sunday.  The people working there were the same, so maybe the two farms are related in some way?  I don't really know but I know that both stalls have absolutely amazing greens.  I wanted to buy the baby mesclun mix because it was beautiful and combined a bunch of different and delicious greens.  To counteract the slight bitterness of the greens I wanted to do a warm bacon vinaigrette.  Alex had the idea of tossing in some thinly sliced pears, but I didn't think that pears and these particular greens would work well together.  I tend to like pears better with a more tender green.  So we compromised on throwing in some thinly sliced honeycrisp apples to add some crispness and brightness to the dish.

This salad was such a wonderful way to end my 2 week long home-cooked food drought and to celebrate that work should slow down a bit for the rest of the year.  I thought all of the components really worked well together.  The sweetness of the apple was a wonderful touch (good job Alex) and I loved the duck bacon vinaigrette because it had a really nice balance of salty and sweet.  The duck bacon was a little gamier (in a good/interesting way) and a little lighter than pork bacon.  Here's to finally being able to cook and eat dinner at home again!  And here's to more upcoming blog posts...

Recipe after the jump!

Fuji (Honeycrisp) Apple Salad with Kimchi, Bacon, Maple Labne

When I first moved to New York one of my law school classmates told me about Momofuku Noodle Bar.  By the time I got home that evening I couldn't remember what it was called so I told Alex on the phone that there was a restaurant named "Wabonka" that we needed to try.  That's right.  Wabonka.  Alex still makes fun of me to this day about the mix up.  And I (probably) deserve it because I was way off.  It happens from time to time.  During my first few trips to the Momofukus, this was the dish that stood out the most in my mind.  I tried several dishes - but this was by far my favorite.  I have been there several times since then and added several more dishes to my list of favorites but this is the only dish that I regularly try to recreate (although not in all of its glory) at home.  This is the first time I have ever made the apple kimchi with bacon and it's certainly the first time I have made the maple labne.  Maybe the full recipe at home reminded me again just how much I love the Momofuku restaurants.  Where else would someone combine a Midde Eastern yogurt, maple syrup, bacon, apples and kimchi?  But somehow it works.  Actually, Alex and I made another Asian-inspired dish using maple syrup several months ago - Fatty 'Cue Brussels Sprouts.  It was pretty freaking good, and this dish is too.  You get a very complex assortment of flavors - spicy kimchi, sweet apples and maple syrup, tart labne, meaty salty bacon and peppery arugula.  It just works.  I don't know how but it does.  All of the flavors are assertive and bold, yet the dish was very nice balance.

Recipe after the jump!

Mache with Warm Brie and Apples

I thought this salad was a gorgeous salad.  I think it would look absolutely beautiful as the salad course of a dinner party.  But I'm not sure that I thought that the salad was completely successful.  I wasn't sure how the components went together.  I loved the warm Brie on top of the toasted baguette rounds.  But you couldn't eat an entire plate of just Brie and baguette.  Plus, it's supposed to be a salad and not just baked Brie.  The apple wedges and the mache did a good job of cutting the richeness of the Brie.  But I just wasn't sure how the ingredients were supposed to go together.  It seemed like a lot of separate components, all of which worked together, but it just never came together into a cohesive salad for me.  The salad was fine and I liked it, but I just didn't quite get it.  As a side note, the picture above is undressed because I thought that the dressing on the mache just didn't look very pretty so I drizzled it on afterward.  A little bit of vanity at work.

Recipe after the jump!

Scallops with Cilantro Sauce and Asian Slaw

 

I will be the first to admit that this meal is crazily not seasonably appropriate.  Given that it is now 30 degrees Fahrenheit in NYC, the more obvious decision would be to make chili or fried chicken, or something else warm, meaty and hearty.  Instead I decided to sear some scallops and serve them over Asian slaw.  Why would I make such a decision?  Well, the recipe sounded pretty good and we had some nice scallops in the fridge just waiting to be cooked.  Plus Alex and I are both still kind of in the mood for light meals after the past few weeks, so it just seemed to make sense to go for a light refreshing dish like this one.

My main complaint with this dish is that it somehow felt incomplete on almost all levels.  The flavors were good, but I wanted something more to bring them to the next level.  I also really wanted something crunchy to provide a textural contrast.  It would have been even better if the crunchy bits had a bit of salt to them (perhaps some finely chopped salted roasted peanuts would have worked).  The slaw was quite good.  I enjoyed the addition of the granny smith apples for some extra sweetness and crunch.  However, should I make this again in the future I think I will alter the ratio of apple and carrot to daikon, or make sure that the daikon is cut smaller than the apples.  In some bites there was a bit too much bitterness from the daikon radish and it overwhelmed all the other flavors.  I thought that the cilantro sauce had nice flavor, but I wanted there to be a little more heat and a little more zip to it.  But the lack of heat could have been due to the fact that our serrano chili just wasn't that hot.  Somehow the balance between the sweet, sour and spicy flavors that I expected in the sauce was just a bit off.  It was more muted than I wanted it to be given the ingredients - a little delicate, rather than in your face.  And while I wanted a light meal, some in your face flavors would have been appreciated.

Recipe after the jump!

Cornbread with Caramelized Onions, Apples and Cheddar

I know that I have mentioned my love of Momofuku Milk Bar several times on this blog.  Their soft serve flavors are amazing (if a little weird at times), and their cornflake chocolate chip marshmallow cookies are absolutely out of this world.  Speaking of their soft serve flavors, right now they have cream cheese frosting soft serve.  It is delicious topped with their carrot cake crumble or the cornflake crunch.  Run, don't walk there, if you love cream cheese frosting because it's fantastic.  Anyway, along with their cookies and ice cream, they have daily bread specials that are quite good.  A few months ago I had their cornbread, which inspired me to create this recipe.  In the past I kept my cornbread quite simple - with fresh (or frozen) corn and some cheese thrown in for good measure.  Oh and scallions from time to time as well.  This is my first attempt at a really out there cornbread.  I can't take all of the credit since I got the idea from Milk Bar, but I think I deserve at least a little credit for coming up with a pretty delicious and interesting cornbread.

Because I love buttermilk in baked goods (it makes them so moist and faintly tangy), I made this a buttermilk cornbread recipe.  I also like my cornbread on the sweeter side but because I was already adding caramelized onions and sauteed apples, I didn't want to add any sugar.  Instead I threw in some honey.  While I thought about throwing in a teaspoon or two of fresh thyme, I decided against it in the end.  Maybe in the future I will experiment with thyme in the cornbread, but this time I really wanted to taste the interplay between the cheddar, the apples and the caramelized onions.  This definitely isn't your grandmother's cornbread - it is far too funky (in a good way) for that.  The best way I can think of to describe it is to say that it is deeply rich and savory.  And incredibly moist.  If that sounds appealing to you, then give it a try!

Recipe after the jump!