Lablabi (Tunisian Chickpea Soup)

Sometimes I pick out a recipe and I don't expect much from it.  Take this recipe for instance.  I thought it would be good, but mostly I wanted another easy vegetarian recipe and I got suckered in by the poached egg in the photo.  I'm such a sucker for poached eggs.  Runny egg yolk is my jam.  And yes, I know I sort of mis-used that term.  So I sent Alex the recipe and said "hey, we should make this sometime."  And then we both proceeded to not do anything about it until New Years Eve rolled around and I wanted a simple dish to make for lunch that didn't require too many ingredients from the grocery.  Luckily, we had everything we needed in the fridge.  In the spirit of full disclosure, if we had been short on eggs I would have made a special trip to the grocery store just to get eggs.  There was no way that I was going to make this soup without poached eggs.  It was one of the "optional enhancements" listed in the original recipe but I think it is totally crucial.  Even if I weren't obsessed with poached eggs I would think it was crucial for the recipe as a whole.  Without the egg the soup lacks body and richness.  As the egg yolk melts into the soup it makes the broth a little creamier.  And while we're on the topic, I think the harissa is another necessary element.  If you don't like heat, just add a little, but I think that without harissa you will be missing out.  The same goes for the fresh herbs - the parsley and mint gave the soup some brightness and freshness.  But if you absolutely had to pick one thing to leave out, I would leave out the herbs.  Or the drizzle of evoo.  You could leave that out too. But if you make the soup and add the egg and harissa you will be pleasantly surprised by just how tasty the soup is.  Don't get scared when you taste the chickpeas by themselves prior to adding the garnishes.  They taste a little bland, but the broth is delicious.  And the soup as a whole with the addition of the garnishes is warm and comforting, not to mention really tasty.

Recipe after the jump!

Egg Salad with Pickled Celery and Coarse Dijon

I know it's a little déclassé, but I have a real soft spot for egg salad.  I picked up my love of egg salad at sleep away camp in elementary school and it has been one of my guilty pleasures ever since then.  My only problem is that I am a little picky when it comes to egg salad due to my pesky aversion to mayonnaise.  I take one look at most egg salads and run for the hills.  I think I can count on one hand the number of places whose egg salad I have been brave enough to taste.  First there was a bagel place near my first apartment in NYC whose egg salad I cautiously ordered after my first 6 months of staring at it skeptically - it was pretty good, but not amazing.  And then there was the egg salad sandwich I ordered at an airport in Canada on my way to Whistler (I can't remember if it was Montreal or Toronto, but I think it was Montreal) that was full of herbs (I remember tarragon, chives and chervil) and absolutely delicious.  I have tried to recreate it at home but my version has never lived up to the original (partially because I have a really tough time finding chervil at the grocery store).  Last week I was really close to ordering a simit (a Turkish bagel) with sumac egg salad from Simit and Smith, but I chickened out and ordered the simit with salmon, red onion and cream cheese instead.  The funny thing is that I haven't been able to get that sumac egg salad out of my mind ever since.  And then I was poking around the various food blogs I like yesterday and stumbled across a recipe for Egg Salad with Pickled Celery and Coarse Dijon on Smitten Kitchen and I decided that it was fate - I had to make egg salad.  I briefly considered adding some sumac to the Smitten Kitchen Recipe and then decided to save the sumac for another day.  I always add coarse dijon mustard and minced shallot to my egg salad (and often to tuna salad as well) because I love the flavor and texture of both, but the addition of pickled celery really intrigued me.  I often use finely chopped celery in tuna salad, but pickling it first had never occurred to me. 

So there I was, in the midst of cooking Tuesday night's dinner, while hard-boiling eggs and also assembling ingredients for the marinade for last night's dinner.  The kitchen was a disaster area.  Alex took one look and told me I was getting a little elaborate and/or crazy.  But thus far, everything has turned out wonderfully and I'm hopeful that tonight's dinner will be equally wonderful.  I ate a couple spoonfuls of the egg salad last night because I couldn't resist (both before and after the addition of the pickled celery and I thought the pickled celery really made a difference), and served the rest of it today over a bed of mixed greens with some whole wheat sourdough that I toasted until warm and crunchy.  It was absolutely lovely - the perfect light meal that was both nostalgic and delicious.  The pickled celery added a nice crunch and some brightness and acidity, while the minced shallots added a little sweetness and more crunch.  It was reminiscent of my own egg salad, but better.  And I am not too proud to admit it.  I think I am in love.

Recipe after the jump!

Rice Noodles with Chinese Chives and Egg

Two weekends ago Alex and I trekked down to Chinatown for lunch and groceries.  I love grocery shopping in Chinatown - everytime we go down there I come back with such an interesting assortment of goodies (like my favorite Ching Kee Cookies, which are both delicious and amusing).  During our last visit I came back with a package of fresh wide rice noodles, flowering chives, fried tofu, Thai chilis and a bunch of other fun things.  I started trying to come up with dishes to cook using those ingredients and ended up deciding to throw them all together in one noodle dish.  The biggest hurdle was trying to loosen the fresh rice noodles because mine were stubbornly stuck together.  I used a combination of the two methods noted below - soaking them in hot water and then microwaving them.  I had never heard of throwing fresh rice noodles in the microwave to loosen them, but I found a post on About.com saying that it worked and I tried it.  It really did work.  Brilliant.  Beyond learning how to nuke fresh rice noodles, I realized a few things while cooking this meal.  The first is that I really like fried tofu.  I need to buy the packages of dried tofu more often because they are brilliant.  You totally don't need meat of any sort when you have some dried tofu in the dish.  The second is that noodles are always better with a little egg mixed in.  The third is that you really need to cut flovering chives up into slightly smaller pieces (especially if you are barely cooking them at all).  Ours were roughly 2 1/2-inches in length and that was just too long.  I'm thinking 1 to 2-inch lengths in the future.  The last thing I realized is that it takes a really long time to prep a meal like this, particularly when you decide to serve the noodles with a side of yu choy, which requires chopping.  There is a lot of chopping involved.  And when there is a lot of chopping involved, there is a lot of mess (and a lot of dishes) involved.  When Alex got home he asked me if I used every single dish in the kitchen.  The answer was close, but not quite.  But it was totally worth it because the noodles were tasty.  And in my opinion, the end (a delicious lunch) totally justifies the means.

Recipe after the jump!

Green Tomato Frittata

I got a little crazy at the farmers' market last weekend and picked up 3 pounds of green tomatoes.  Alex shook his head at me, but I love green tomatoes.  I have only recently discovered all of the wonderful things that you can do with green tomatoes instead of just making more fried green tomatoes.  Who knew you could pickle green tomatoes, or make baked goods with green tomatoes?  I am really tempted to make a green tomato pie as well (like this one from honey & jam), but that would involve making pie and we all know my feelings on doing that at home.  Given the number of green tomatoes we found ourselves with I started fishing around for more green tomato recipes and ideas.  Once I saw a green tomato frittata on the NY Times I knew I was going to give that a try.  But the NY Times recipe was a little more labor intensive than I was really aiming for - it involved frying half of the green tomatoes and peel and dicing the others - so I decided to ignore that recipe and just make a really basic frittata.  I have to say that this recipe highlighted the tart flavor of the tomatoes themselves far more than any other green tomato recipe we have made.  I thought the little bursts of tart green tomato were fabulous with the rich egg-y frittata.  If you served this frittata with a nice little green salad, croissants and some fruit, this could be the unique centerpoint of a lovely brunch.

P.S.  I am a little behind on posts again due to work, but I have a number that should be coming in the next few days...  So stay tuned.

Recipe after the jump!

Eggs with Curry Leaves

This is the second version of scrambled eggs that we have made from Mangoes and Curry Leaves: Culinary Travels Through the Great Subcontinent.  Sadly, neither Alex nor I can remember the other scrambled eggs recipe well enough to decide which one we liked better...  I remember being pleasantly surprised by how palatable I found the tomatoes in the Andhra Scrambled Eggs.  But what I really remember from that meal was being blown away by the Andhra Spiced Eggplant.  Speaking of that eggplant, we need to make it again ASAP because it was delicious.  I have one minor criticism of this particular scrambled eggs recipe; I prefer my eggs cooked gently and slowly over a moderately low temperature, rather than scrambled quickly over a higher heat.  That way the eggs remain light, fluffy and moist.  Because the eggs here were poured in a much hotter pan than I usually use to scramble eggs, they were a little dry.  They also felt a little... heavier and more filling than typical scrambled eggs (both because of the cooking method and the amount of ingredients in the eggs).  On the plus side, the flavors here were quite interesting and were fun to experiment with.  These eggs were heavily spiced with curry leaves, cayenne chili, shallot, ginger and scallions.  In terms of sheer flavor, they packed a wallop.  And I usually love that kind of thing.  But part of me would have preferred a really simple plate of pale or golden yellow, fluffy scrambled eggs with just a few chives on top for color.  Simple, but satisfying.

Recipe after the jump!

Spanish Tortilla with Broccoli, Chorizo and Onion

You might not know this, but eggs are kind of my thing.  If you have read this blog at all in the past (or gone to brunch with me) then it should be fairly obvious.  Then again, Alex does try to curb my egg obsession so there aren't as many egg recipes on this blog as there might otherwise be...  So maybe it's not as obvious as I think it is.  Actually, I tried to add eggs to our dinner last night and Alex shot me down.  Anyway, I decided that I wanted to make this recipe to use the broccoli I picked up from Fairway last week along with the eggs from the farmers' market.  And for those of you not familiar with Spanish tortillas - they are essentially heavier frittatas with thinly sliced potatoes inside. used As we started to make the dish Alex told me that I had selected two of the things that we are worst at in life - flipping eggs and homemade mayonnaise (or aioli in this case).  We have tried to make mayonnaise three times in the past - once with the food processor, once with our immersion blender and once with the blender.  All three times we failed.  Epically.  We ended up with thin, runny, greasy messes each time.  And it happened again.  Apparently we really suck at making mayonnaise.  But this time we Googled how to rescue a broken aioli and found out that we are not the only people who have this problem.  There were several articles and blog posts citing Julia Child's method for saving a broken aioli or mayonnaise.  We used her method and it totally worked!  Hurray!  But our tortilla didn't flip too well...  It broke into a million pieces and chunks got stuck to the pan.  So we failed there too.  And there was really no rescuing it because it's not like you can put a frittata/omelet/Spanish tortilla back together.  But in the end it's the flavor that matters and the flavor was good.  It didn't really occur to me until we put the ingredients in the pan, but I think you should either add more eggs or cut down on the amount of broccoli and chorizo in the future.  The ratio of filling to eggs is a little off and the broccoli is heavy, which makes it hard to flip the tortilla successfully.  It was still pretty heavy (partially due to the ratio of eggs to filling and partially because of the combination of ingredients and flavors), but I knew that was likely to happen going in because Spanish tortillas always strike me as heavy.  I thought that the absence of potato would make more of a difference and make it taste a little lighter, but not so much.  Either way, it was a tasty dish and we finally made a (semi-)successful aioli!  Yay!

Recipes after the jump!

Baked Eggs with Yogurt and Chile

This recipe was one that immediately drew me once I opened up Plenty: Vibrant Vegetable Recipes from London's Ottolenghi by Yotam Ottolenghi.  I can't express to you how much I love baked eggs.  It has gotten to the point where certain individuals (and I am not going to name names here, but you know who you are) make fun of my obsession with baked eggs.  I can't help it.  They are uber yummy.  Plus I am on a Middle Eastern kick of sorts right now so I am drawn towards anything with that flavor profile. 

I have to say that these eggs were very interesting, although not the most successful baked eggs we have ever made.  I liked the addition of the yogurt sauce and the addition of the chilis, but I'm not sure how I felt about the arugula.  I think in the future I would potentially use a different green (maybe spinach).  My biggest complaint was that it never quite felt like it came together at the level that I wanted it to.  It smelled great and looked delicious, but it was good (verging on, but not quite making it to, very good).  The bottom line is that it wasn't amazing and I wanted it to blow my mind.  I guess my expectations were set a little too high here...  We didn't use the sage or the amount of butter that the recipe called for, but we added some scallions and I think the butter level in our dish was more than sufficient.  If I had added more butter I worry that it would have felt heavy and/or greasy.  And sage sounded like an odd ingredient to me.  When I think sage I think Thanksgiving - stuffing, turkey, butternut squash.  I don't think arugula, eggs and Greek yogurt.  But maybe that's my bad.  It's entirely possible that if we had made the dish exactly as written that it would have been the mind blowing experience I was looking for.  Instead I had to settle for good. 

Recipe after the jump!

Egg and Spinach Kati Rolls with Cilantro Chutney

Happy Fourth of July everyone!  This dish had nothing to do with the Fourth (we didn't make it or eat it today), but I am going to post it anyway since I have the time on my hands to do so. But it's going to be a short post because...   Well because I am tired and i have work tomorrow!  Suffice it to say that this is one of my favorite meals that we have made of late.  It was totally delicious.  The kati rolls had a really nice combination of flavors and textures - buttery, flaky parathas, the sweetness of the onion and the garam masala, the slight smokiness of the cumin in the eggs and the chutney and the fresh, bright flavor and kick of the cilantro chutney...  And by the way, our cilantro chutney had some serious heat so a little went a long way.  It was just so yummy.  In case you couldn't tell, I thoroughly enjoyed it.  I was surprised by how well all of the elements came together because sometimes when I conceptualize a dish in my head it never quite comes together.  But this was a total (vegetarian) winner.  Yay!

Recipe after the jump!

Squash Blossom and Zucchini Frittata

After the world's LONGEST absence from home-cooked meals, Alex and I finally had the opportunity to sit down and make a meal together.  Well, I made the meal while Alex tried to talk to Time Warner about our lousy internet speeds.  But that's really beside the point.  The point is, after a few weddings (one in Connecticut and one in Kentucky) and a bunch of really late nights at work, I finally got to cook something and eat it.  Yay!  So I did what I always do and wandered around the farmers' market picking up things willy-nilly until I decided on something to make.  This time I picked up some zucchini, fresh sweet corn, green beans, sun gold tomatoes (greenhouse tomatoes, but still delicious), fresh basil and parsley, cherries, peaches...  I'm really bummed that I ended up missing sugar snap peas, pea shoots and the end of fresh asparagus season due to work, but I can't be too upset that more amazing tomatoes and corn are just around the corner. 

Anyway, this frittata accomplished something that most restaurant frittatas don't - it was moist, tasty and fluffy, not dry and tasteless.  The last restaurant frittata I had was at a place on the UWS called Tarallucci E Vino.  It was one of the driest, most disappointing frittatas I have had in a long time.  It made me remember why ordering a frittata at a restaurant can be a recipe for failure.  I can only think of one frittata I have ever had that was truly satisfying and that was at Spotted Pig, where everything you order could possibly order is delicious.  The one thing that made my experience at Tarallucci e Vino one to remember was the scenery.  And by scenery I mean Matt Damon.  He's just as cute in person as he is in the movies.  To be honest I almost missed him entirely because I was too busy oogling his wife's black asymmetrical tank top.  I didn't realize it was him until I heard his voice.  And for the record, Alex's PLT (pancetta, lettuce, tomato and sunny-side egg) sandwich was pretty tasty.  While we were sitting on the couch and eating this frittata I told Alex that I would be perfectly happy to be served this frittata at any restaurant.  And I stand by that statement.  It was great.  It also made me sad about how much I miss eating at home, but I am hoping that work will slow down a little bit and I will once again be able to eat dinner at home...  Until then, I have the memories of this frittata to keep me happy.

Recipe after the jump!

Sopa de Ajo (Garlic Soup)

Sopa de ajo (aka garlic soup) sounds a little weird right?  I thought so.  I know it's a totally traditional Spanish dish, but I have never been inspired to try it or make it at home.  But we had some stale bread in the apartment and Alex wanted to use it, so I found this Mario Batali recipe online at Serious Eats for sopa de ajo with poached eggs.  I have to admit, the poached eggs were what really sold me on this recipe.  Well, that and the fact that we had everything we needed in the apartment (which is a huge plus on a rainy weeknight).  This soup is simple and very satisfying, with a pleasing richness from the poached egg.  It's the perfect type of soup to eat when you are feeling a little under the weather or when the weather outside just isn't so great.  One note - depending on the type of bread you use you might have to play with the ratio of broth to bread a little - ours got really thick, almost oatmeal-like, because we used a fairly hearty bread (and probably because Alex used more than 1/4 pound on accident).  As far as meals go, it was comforting and tasty.  We served it with a nice salad, and it was a perfect meal for a rainy Tuesday night.

Recipe after the jump!

Sauteed Asparagus with Green Garlic and Fried Eggs

This is the type of meal that I would eat all the time if I were still single or living alone.  And that's exactly what I told Alex while we were eating dinner last night.  I freaking love asparagus and I love eggs.  Any dish that combines those two thing is A-OK with me.  I guess that's no surprise to anyone seeing as we have a number of other recipes on the blog that combine those two things (see Midnight Asparagus with Creamy Eggs and Pan-Roasted Asparagus, Poached Egg and Miso Butter for two quick examples, although I know that there are at least 2 more on the blog off the top of my head).  I just can't help myself when things go together this well!  

This is the perfect mid-week meal because it comes together easily and quickly, and requires minimal prep-work.  Alex and I made it Thursday night after I got home from work around 9 pm and we had it on the table (and eaten) by 9:30.  How easy is it to just fry up a few eggs and serve them on top of some sauteed asparagus?  I am strongly of the belief that many dishes would be improved by the addition of a runny egg or two, but that's another story entirely.  Another plus for this dish is that it can be adapted to use whatever you have in the fridge.  I know I generally don't have access to green garlic, but we had it this time so we used it.  Regular garlic would work just fine!  

As a side note, before you all think I have turned vegetarian on you,  the next few posts will be meaty.  So stay tuned!

Recipe after the jump!

Oeufs en Cocotte with Ramps

I love eggs.  I don't know why, but I really do.  My love affair with eggs is the reason that I love brunch so much.  I never order French toast at brunch and I rarely order pancakes (except for the macadamia nut pancakes at Boots & Kimo's in Hawaii - yum).  I order eggs - eggs benedict, baked eggs, fried eggs, etc.  I just love eggs.  So every weekend that Alex and I spend in NYC without brunch plans or visitors, I try to make eggs.  I generally can't convince him to go out to brunch with me so I bring brunch to us.  Usually I scramble the eggs but a few weekends ago I wanted to bake them to make use of the ramps I had picked up.  Baked eggs (or oeufs en cocotte if you're going to be all French about it) just feel so much more luxurious and indulgent than scrambled eggs.  When you cook the croutons in the eggs they soak up some of the eggs and crème fraîche and get all yummy, but retain some of their crunchy texture.  The croutons are my favorite part.  The ramps didn't provide as much flavor as I thought they would.  I really thought their flavor would pervade the dish, but it didn't.  That isn't to say that the flavor of the ramps disappeared entirely, but it certainly wasn't the dominant flavor here.  I tasted the tangy flavor of the crème fraîche and the creamy richness of the egg yolks, combined with the crunch and salty flavor of the croutons.  I'm not complaining.  It was just surprising because in the other dishes we have made with ramps the flavor has been much more distinct.  But as far as lazy weekend brunches at home go, this was a nice one.

Recipe after the jump!

Midnight Asparagus with Creamy Eggs

It's finally fresh asparagus season!  Hurray!  In the next few weeks I will probably have a crazy number of asparagus recipes on the blog.  I just can't help myself.  This recipe was one I found on Serious Eats during a recipe garthering/meal planning binge a few weeks ago.  Once I start looking up recipes I can't seem to stop myself!  The thing that I like most about this recipe is how "springy" it is.  Asparagus is essence of spring in vegetable form and once you add in the lemon juice for me it just screams spring.  I'm not certain that it is the most successful asparagus recipe (or egg recipe for that matter) that we have ever done, but it was a really nice meal.  And on top of the taste, it was a super easy one pot meal, which made it even more awesome.

Recipe after the jump!

Fried Eggs with Sauteed Ramps and Duck Bacon

Somehow (and this is truly shocking living in NYC) I have never had ramps before.  Every spring ramps pop up on restaurant menus all over the city and appear at the farmers' markets, where people buy them en masse.  Some of my favorite restaurants (including Momofuku) put ramps on the menu for the brief month that they are in season.  And yet, I never managed to eat any.  The other day when we were at the farmers' market I happened to come across a large pile of ramps at the table for Mountain Sweet Berry Farm and I snagged a few bunches to experiment with.  Incidentally, Mountain Sweet Berry Farm also makes these amazing homemade potato chips that they sell at the market in little paper bags.  You should definitely try them if you find yourself near Union Square on Wednesday or Saturday.  Moving on, never having cooked (or eaten) ramps before, I was at a loss for how to prepare them.  I know I have seem them on menus pickled, in pastas and on fancy-schmancy pizzas, but I wanted to know how best to prepare them at home.  The guy manning the Mountain Sweet Berry Farm table recommended sauteeing them or serving them in salads.  But I didn't know what to serve the sauteed ramps with.  I decided to turn to Google and stumbled across a bunch of recipes that referenced serving the ramps with eggs.  I had picked up a dozen eggs from the farmers' market too that day.  Perfect!  So we used a recipe from Serious Eats for guidance and made ourselves some eggs with sauteed ramps and duck bacon.

I had no idea that ramps would taste so garlick-y and onion-y all at the same time.  They reminded me slightly of garlic chives, only more intense.  Alex called this dish "ramps with cholesterol and more cholesterol."  I have to admit that he has a point - it wasn't exactly healthy.  But I thought it was pretty tasty.  And I thought that the flavor of the ramps paired really well with the runny egg yolk.  It did a pretty good job of cutting through the richness.  Mostly I'm just glad that I finally had the chance to cook and eat ramps!

Recipe after the jump!

Fluffy Baked Eggs with Roasted-Vegetable Hash

When I was initially conceptualizing this dish I was thinking about making sweet potato hash with runny egg yolks.  But then I started playing around online and came up with this dish.  It wasn't exactly what I was planning on, but it seemed interesting enough to alter my tentative meal plans.  So we hit the farmers' market to stock up on eggs and mushrooms to go with the sweet potatoes we already had in the pantry.  I'm not sure exactly what inspired me to buy sweet potatoes, but I decided some time ago to pick up a few in an attempt to mix things up a bit more.  I was planning on making a Vietnamese curry with sweet potatoes, but somehow that never came to be.  And then I thought about making roasted sweet potato fries, but that never came to be either.  So today for lunch we finally used our sweet potatoes to make this dish.  And it was lovely - very autumnal, but not heavy and greasy.  The eggs were fluffy and light.  And delightfully cheesy, but not overwhelmingly so.  Alex was actually amazed by how much the eggs rose/puffed up during the baking process.  They almost reminded me of a souffle, but not quite as airy and far less labor-intensive to prepare.  It's not a dish that I will be dreaming about for years to come, but I was very pleased with it.

Recipe after the jump!

Andhra Spiced Eggplant and Andhra Scrambled Eggs

From time to time we fall into a rut.  I think everyone does, whether it's a food rut, an exercise rut, an occupation rut, etc.  There are certain ingredients we always have in the apartment and that we use with abandon because we are so comfortable with them.  But most of the ingredients in this meal did not fall into that category.  This meal was so different from anything else we have made in recent memory that I think it completely blew any rut we might have been in right out of the water.  I'm not sure exactly what drew me to these two recipes, except that I was thinking that I have been neglecting a bunch of my cookbooks recently.  While we use Hot Sour Salty Sweet quite often, we rarely use this cookbook, Mangoes and Curry Leaves: Culinary Travels Through the Great Subcontinent.  Both books are by the same authors, Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid and both are fantastic, but while Hot Sour Salty Sweet is right in our Asian wheelhouse, the recipes in Mangoes and Curry Leaves are not.  One problem with the recipes is that they often require a number of Indian, Nepalese or Sri Lankan ingredients that we don't have in the apartment.  I'm not even sure if or where I can find some of the ingredients.  Unfortunately that knocks out a lot of recipes.  Luckily I happened to have everything we needed (or I knew where to find it) for these two recipes.

I can't think of enough good things to say about the Andhra Spiced Eggplant, which both Alex and I were fairly blown away by.  The flavor combination is just so unique and wonderful.  I really thought that the eggplant would be spicy, but somehow all of the flavors really melded together to create a very nice savory dish with great depth of flavor.  The recipe recommends serving the eggplant as a dip for chapatis/pita or serving with white rice.  We happened to have some frozen parathas that we served with the eggplant dip and the buttery, flaky parathas worked really well but I'm sure that chapatis/pita would be an equally good combination.  I will definitely be serving this one again in the future.  As for the eggs, I thought they were nice too.  We both preferred the eggplant, but I was very happy with the eggs.  I don't generally like cooked tomatoes (I love them raw, but I don't like the mushy texture when you cook them), but they really worked in these eggs, which is something I never thought I would say.  Scrambled eggs and tomatoes are a very typical homestyle Chinese dish that they used to serve in China all the time that I avoided like the plague.  But it was good! 

Recipes after the jump!

Radish Sliver Omelet

I love easy egg dishes.  Eggs are one of my go-to quick and easy meals because you can do so many different things with them.  And they are so freaking easy to make!  In the spirit of Chinese New Year I decided to make this Radish Sliver Omelet from the Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook: Recipes from Hunan Province with the eggs and daikon that I picked up at the farmers' market.  I'm on a bit of a daikon kick lately, in case you couldn't tell.  I am addicted to the crunch.  I briefly considered counting this as one of our Chinese New Year meals, but then I decided that was lame since the dish is so incredibly simple.  So I'm giving you guys another bonus Chinese recipe!  It's not an earth shattering/ground breaking recipe, but it is tasty and very simple to make.  Alex thought the omelet would benefit from a slightly sweet dipping sauce, but I thought it was perfectly fine on its own.  It does require a little time because you have to salt the daikon slivers and set them aside for 30 minutes to remove excess moisture, but aside from that it comes together in a matter of minutes.  You could do what Alex and I did and prep the daikon, then go shower, and then come back and cook lunch.  It worked out pretty well if I do say so myself!

Recipe after the jump!

Fried Rice with Chicken and Chinese Sausage

When I was younger I hated fried rice.  I'm not sure why I hated it, except that (1) I loved plain white rice and I thought putting things in it or on it (including soy sauce) ruined it and (2) I disliked cooked carrots and peas so I couldn't understand why you would add them to any dish.  It took me years to grow to appreciate fried rice and even now, I have to admit that I prefer plain white rice with any meal.  I'm happy to eat fried rice as a meal in and of itself, but if I am going to order family-style and share a bunch of dishes with friends or family, I would prefer to stick with plain white rice as the accompaniment to my meal and not fried rice.  True story.  So I almost never order fried rice at a restaurant because I just don't see the point.  Somehow it is an entirely different story at home, where we make fried rice from time to time.  But I think that fried rice serves a purpose for me at home that it doesn't serve at a restaurant.  Fried rice for me is an amazing way to repurpose leftovers (both rice and protein) and is also a comforting, homey meal.  At restaurants I generally want meals that I cannot or for whatever reason prefer not to make at home.  Somehow in my mind, fried rice is not a restaurant-quality dish.  And to be perfectly honest, so many restaurants make such inferior, mediocre fried rice that I wouldn't order it even if I considered it to be a restaurant-quality dish.  I guess that's the rice snob in me rearing its ugly head.  This fried rice is wonderful because it has a variety of flavors and textures - I love the chunks of egg, the sweet sausage and the marinated chicken.  And you can really modify it to suit whatever it is that you have in the fridge.  No peas?  No problem.  I considered adding some dried shiitake mushrooms like we did in this Stir-Fried Rice with Pork and Shiitake Mushrooms, but I got lazy.  I also considered adding more soy sauce or other liquids to season the rice itself like we did in this Thai Fried Rice and this Fried Rice with Chinese Sausage and Chicken Adobo.  But I generally prefer my fried rice on the dry side and I wanted a more clean/pure fried rice, so I left the soy sauce out as well.

Recipe after the jump!

Poached Eggs in Tomato Sauce with Chickpeas and Feta (Shakshuka)

What do you make when you have no idea what nights you will be home for dinner and don't dare defrost things?  If you are like Alex and I, your options are often Annie's organic mac & cheese (generally whole wheat, but not always), a frozen Trader Joe's tarte d'alsace (aka tarte flambee), pita/flatbread/lavash pizzas or eggs.  Yes, we are just as guilty of relying on prepared foods as the next person.  The wonderful thing about eggs is that they can hang out in the fridge until you want them and they can be made hundreds of different ways.  Sometimes we scramble them, sometimes we bake them, sometimes we fry them, and sometimes we make omelets.  Sometimes we serve them solo or with a salad and sometimes we do the whole breakfast for dinner bit with bacon, etc.  It really just depends on what we have in the fridge/cupboard and how much effort we feel like putting forth.  This time I wanted to put forth a little effort on a recipe that I found a few weeks ago that uses up pantry and fridge staples that we always have in the house - canned whole peeled tomatoes, canned chickpeas, pita, eggs, garlic, onions, jalapeno, feta, parsley and cilantro.  Ok so sometimes we don't have the herbs or the pita, but we have them more often than not. 

What I liked most about this dish was how satisfying if felt - warm and slightly rich (from the runny egg yolks and feta) - while still remaining (relatively) healthy.  It felt like a meal, whereas sometimes a plate full of just eggs (or a vegetarian meal) can leave you craving more.  I also really enjoyed that it was vegetarian.  We really don't cook enough vegetarian meals and when we do, we tend to make pastas or other carb-heavy meals.  The only carbs in this meal were the pitas, but if you were doing the whole carb-free thing you could cut them out.  Anyway, this was a wonderful Middle Eastern deviation from our standard vegetarian meals, one that I could definitely see us making again.

Recipe after the jump!

Smoked Salmon and Egg Tartines

Growing up my parents would buy bagels and lox for us on random weekend mornings.  I was always so excited when I would come down for breakfast and see the bag of bagels on the counter with cream cheese and lox in the fridge.  Once I moved to NYC all of a sudden bagels with cream cheese and lox became insanely accessible.  And then I discovered that lox and scrambled eggs work really well together too.  I guess I should say thanks to the guys at Barney Greengrass for teaching me that.  I don't know why smoked salmon and eggs work so well together, but they do.  This morning for breakfast I was thinking about making scrambled eggs with some smoked salmon that I picked up from Zabar's, but then I decided that I wanted to make an egg salad with smoked salmon instead. So that's what I did.  I had some fresh dill that I picked up for another recipe and dill is such a natural pairing with salmon so I threw that in.  I don't like too much mayo in my egg salad, so I added in some whole-grain mustard, which I do with every salad, including tuna salad.  You don't want more than a touch of mustard because you don't want the flavor to fight with the flavors of the smoked salmon and the dill, but a little mustard is the perfect touch for me.

Recipe after the jump!