Parmesan-Roasted Broccoli

This dish represents everything that I love about Ina Garten (aka the Barefoot Contessa).  She makes the best simple variations on classic dishes that I have ever seen.  None of her recipes are earth-shattering or particularly inventive, but they are the types of recipes that you love to make and eat at home.  And I don't mean to be insulting when I say that her recipes aren't earth-shattering or inventive.  It's like she takes the recipes that you know and love - like cheese grits, biscuits and steak sandwiches, and just makes them that much better with a few tweaks here and there.  She really is just that good.  I used to scoff at her show on Food Network because it all seemed so boring, but I can admit now that I was totally wrong to do so.  There is nothing wrong with cooking really simple, but delicious food.  Those two adjectives are not mutually exclusive.  Take this broccoli for instance.  There's nothing groundbreaking about it - you roast it with evoo, s&p and then top it with lemon zest, lemon juice, toasted pine nuts, Parmigiano-Reggiano and basil.  Done.  Simple, right?  And yes.  It is very simple.  But it is also very very good.  It's the type of dish I can see myself eating years from now with my grandkids (which really is years and years away since I don't have kids yet and don't plan on having them anytime soon), loving it just as much then as I do now.  I might try a few tweaks here and there (like adding a pinch of crushed red pepper flakes), but I think I will always return to her base recipes.  Ina Garten writes the type of recipes that you would never outgrow because she doesn't buy into all the gimmicks and trends like most younger chefs.  Her recipes never call for things like sous-vide or immersion circulators.  Nor does she throw together terribly random combinations of ingredients that somehow work together and yet make you question the sanity of the chef behind the dish.  Instead she relies on simple techniques (like oven roasting) and great ingredients and creates really delicious dishes that anyone can make at home, no matter their skill level.  And you have to respect that.

Recipe after the jump!

Grilled Treviso (Radicchio) with Balsamic Vinaigrette

When I was conceiving of tonight's meal I knew I wanted to make our usual roast chicken, but I didn't want to do an arugula salad with it.  I wanted something a little more seasonal - a little different.  So I decided to "grill" up some Treviso radicchio.  I say "grill" because we don't have a grill here in NYC.  Instead I seasoned the radicchio with evoo, s&p and cooked it on the stove top in our grill pan.  Cooking it in the grill pan rather than on a grill means that you miss out on the smokey flavor of the grill, but you get a similar caramelization.  Cooking the radicchio mellows some of the bitterness and the balsamic offsets that natural bitterness nicely.  You really need to use a nice aged balsamic here or it will be more acidic than sweet.  Radicchio still isn't one of my favorite lettuces or veggies and I still prefer a simple arugula salad overall, but this was a really nice change and very seasonal.  The flavor of the grilled radicchio and the balsamic seemed so perfectly autumnal to me.

Recipe after the jump!

Ginger-Cilantro Rice

I love rice.  Even if I didn't love rice, we would eat it all the time in our apartment because Alex is verging on obsessive about rice.  He has eaten big bowls of plain buttered rice before.  Just rice with a little butter, s&p.  That's it.  I'm telling you, he's crazy about his rice.  Because I'm not quite that crazy, this isn't plain buttered rice.  Instead this is a fancy rice tossed with a ginger-cilantro-scallion sesame oil mixture.  I guess the lesson learned is that Alex goes plain and homey, I go fancy.  I really wanted this rice to go with the Miso-Marinated Chilean Sea Bass.  I originally wanted to make brown rice, but I thought that it would be fun to serve the sea bass with a more flavorful/interesting alternative.  I wish there had been a more balanced flavor profile to this rice.  The flavor and aroma of the sesame oil was a little overwhelming.  And it almost tasted a little bitter or acrid.  I assume that is from the sesame oil because there weren't any other ingredients in the rice that could result in that bitter flavor.  I wanted this rice to have more of the flavor of the herbs and less of the sesame oil.  So if I were to make it again I would cut the amount of sesame oil in half.  You could taste the ginger, but not the cilantro or the scallion and those were the ingredients that I really wanted to taste.

Recipe after the jump!

Spicy Long Beans with Sausage and Mushrooms

One of the thing I love most about Asian grocery stores is the rather random assortment of fun ingredients like long beans.  I always think about buying them, but I never do because I end up buying pea shoots, yu choy or gai lan.  About a month ago I finally pulled the trigger and bought some.  Then I got busy at work and forgot all about them.  They turned up in the bottom of the crisper about a week or two later, moldy and gross.  Fail.  But I decided this past weekend to try again so I picked up another bunch.  And we finally made long beans!  One of the things that immediately drew me to this recipe (aside form the long beans of course) was the fact that everything in the recipe is a staple that we keep in the pantry or refrigerator.  We didn't have to go out to buy anything.  Go us.  However, this recipe used up the rest of our sesame oil so before we can make it again we need to stock back up.  Here's hoping that I remember to pick up some more sesame oil on my next trip to the grocery...

I am pretty impressed with our first attempt at long beans.  They were really tasty and interesting.  Every time we make a dish with dried shiitake mushrooms I am reminded of just how much I like them as an ingredient.  We made Stir-Fried Rice with Pork and Shiitake Mushrooms back in February that was absolutely delicious, which I totally attribute to the earthy, funky flavor of the mushrooms.  The same held true here - I loved the flavor of the mushrooms.  The preserved vegetables added some funk of their own to the dish too, but in a slightly different way.  The mushrooms are more deeply umami whereas the preserved vegetables are pungently salty and garlicky.  I also thought that the ground pork and Chinese sausage together were a really nice combination.  The Chinese sausage is rich and porky, but sweet and has a nice crisp texture to it, while the ground pork is meaty and homey.  I thought this was the type of dish (with slightly different proportions to be heavier on the green beans and lighter on the meat) that I could totally have seen myself eating in a back alley restaurant in China with plastic stools and little tables set up outside on the sidewalk.  It was totally satisfying and not at all pretentious.  Two thumbs up.  I told Alex that this is my favorite recipe we have made from this particular cookbook yet.  The Five-Spice Chicken with Sugar Snaps was pretty good, but as far as I am concerned this dish was better.

Recipe after the jump!

Miso-Marinated Chilean Sea Bass with Sauteed Asian Greens

So there are a billion different recipes for miso-marinated or miso-glazed sea bass out there.  This was our version.  I picked up some pre-portioned sea bass fillets from Whole Foods and wanted to do something easy and vaguely Asian with them.  I tend to like Chilean sea bass when prepared with Asian ingredients (a combination of ginger, soy, lime and cilantro being my typical marinade/sauce) and flavors, so I decided to stick with similar Asian flavors, but try a different recipe.  So we went with miso, mirin and sake.  And then we served the fish with some Ginger-Cilantro Rice (which I will post about later) and some Asian greens (hon tsai tai - a mild Asian mustard green) sauteed simply with garlic and soy sauce.

I thought the fish was crazy delicious - one of my favorite things we have cooked recently.  It was sweet, but not cloyingly so.  Then there was the miso that shone through the sweetness without overpowering the other flavors.  Most importantly, the fish was very moist and tender - perfectly cooked.  Beyond being tasty, the fish is super easy to make and requires very few ingredients.  Marinating the fish takes a few hours, but the dish is just so easy and the marinade imparts so much flavor that I can't hold the marinating period against it.  I would gladly marinate everything that went through our kitchen if the end result was this good.  As for the sauteed greens, I love Asian greens simply stir-fried with garlic.  This is one of the basic recipes for stir-fried greens that I use and vary depending on my mood and what we have in the fridge.  I wanted it to be super simple to go with the sea bass so all I threw in was garlic, soy and sesame oil.  Sometimes I mix things up with ginger or hoisin or cornstarch to thicken the sauce up.  But not this time.  This time I wanted it to be as basic as could be so I could both taste the hon tsai tai (which I have never tried before and thoroughly enjoyed) and so the flavors didn't compete with the fish or the rice.  The greens weren't as delicious as the sea bass, but I thought they were the perfect simple side for the meal.

Recipes after the jump!

Pasta e Fagioli

After New Hampshire I craved salad - big mounts of leafy greens topped with all sorts of delicious things.  Alex craved soup with a bunch of veggies.  Clearly we were on the same page with the veggie cravings but had very different ideas on how to fulfill those cravings.  So this was a soup I came up with in honor of his request.  I guess I can't say that there were a ton of veggies in here - there was kale, carrots and celery.  That should count for something, right?  And I have been wanting a soup with cannellini beans since it started getting cooler so I wanted those to be in the soup as well.  And since Alex is a huge fan of bacon, I threw that in too.  As a side note, I can't claim credit for this recipe entirely.  I stumbled across the base recipe online somewhere and then played with it a bit (but now I can't seem to find it online so I can't give a shout out to the source of the original base recipe).  Then we made ourselves some soup.  Really good soup.  Some might say it was the ideal soup for the winter - filling and satisfying, with lots of different (but complimentary) flavors and textures.  Or at least the ideal soup for those who don't particularly like most chili recipes.  It was nice to have bites composed of different ingredients that all worked together so well.  I liked the subtle bacon flavor (as well as the texture of the crunchy bacon in the soup) and the creamy, starchy quality of the beans contrasted with the toothsome quality of the al dente orecchiette pasta.  I also really liked the drizzle of evoo on top to give the soup an extra layer of fruity evoo flavor.  It sounds like a really strange thing to add, but if you use nice high-quality evoo it's a delicious addition.  We served the soup with some nice hearty pane pugliese from Sullivan Street Bakery.  I figured some nice crusty bread, toasted and drizzled with more of that evoo, would be the perfect accompaniment to this soup.  If you wanted to, this batch of soup could easily serve a family of four for dinner.  Throw in a small salad and some toasted bread and you have yourself a meal.  For just Alex and I a salad seemed like overkill so we just did the bread and it was more than enough.  We have enough soup left for lunch later in the weekend sitting in the fridge.  I love fall - such perfect soup weather!


Recipe after the jump!

Tofu Dengaku (Broiled Tofu with Miso)

What do you do when it's 8:00 pm and you realize that your dinner that you were in the midst of making is going to take another 2 hours?  Well if it's the weekend and you're Alex and I you probably have a snack and stick with it.  But if it's mid-week, you scramble for something else that cooks up in 30 minutes or less.  In this case, you go ahead and broil up some tofu smeared with miso paste.  We have made a similar recipe before with eggplant, but I have been holding onto this recipe for an occasion like last night where you need to whip something up in a hurry for some time.  And man does this cook up in a hurry.  Miso packs such a punch that a little goes a long way - the tofu doesn't require any salt (or additional seasoning) whatsoever.  I think Alex liked the dish a little more than I did, but he generally likes miso more than I do.  For the record, it's not that I disliked the dish in anyway, it's just that I had my heart set on something else and somehow this didn't quite satisfy in comparison.  I also tend to find almost straight up miso a little overwhelming at times.  But no complaints here.  The dish was very quick, super easy and fairly tasty.  What more can you ask for?

Recipe after the jump!