I am so excited that squash season is finally here. Yay. I know you can get butternut and spaghetti squash year-round at most decent grocery stores, but I love the selection of fresh squash at the farmers' market during the fall. I have been on the lookout for delicata squash (which I think is my favorite of the squash varieties I have tried) but I am also determined to try a few new varieties this year. I am thinking cheese pumpkins or blue Hokkaido squash (if I can find it). We have a kabocha squash at home right now, but I pick at least one kabocha squash up per season. Strangely enough, I never ate any variety of squash prior to moving to NYC. My first year here I was wandering through the farmers' market in Union Square where I saw a squash that looked interesting and I bought it. I haven't looked back since.
We tend to be a little lazy with spaghetti squash and we make our Spaghetti Squash with Moroccan Spices repeatedly without even considering searching for a new recipe. This time I wanted to try something new and I took some inspiration from a pumpkin-coconut curry that I was considering making with our kabocha squash. One thing I will say about roasting the spaghetti squash in the oven is that it cooks far more evenly. Cooking it in the microwave is obviously much faster, but you end up with pockets of undercooked or inconsistently cooked squash. So I would recommend that if you have the time, go ahead and roast your spaghetti squash. It is worth it. As for the seasonings, I thought that the combination of the heat of the cayenne chili (we added additional cayenne pepper, but it might be spicy enough with just the chili for most people) and the sweetness of the squash and coconut was lovely. I have never tried cooking with coconut oil before but I thought it was a nice way to add a little additional coconut flavor to gently perfume the whole dish in addition to the more concentrated flavor of the dried shredded coconut. I might try the coconut oil in a few more stir-fries until I figure out exactly what role it is going to play in our kitchen, but this was a good first attempt!
Recipe after the jump!
I really love a good meatball so this recipe sounded really interesting to me. Buffalo wings are awesome. Meatballs are awesome. Why wouldn't they be awesome together? The problem with these meatballs is that they are lacking a key component to the buffalo wings - texture. When you bite into a nice buffalo wing you have the crispy deep-fried skin with the moist chicken. These meatballs have the right flavor. And they are moist. But they are one big ball of smush. There was literally no texture to them. I had hoped that the celery and the shallot would provide a little texture, but no such luck. When I saw how wet and soft they were I decided to broil them for a few minutes at the end of the cooking process to try to get a crust to form on the exterior. No dice. The broiling did help to firm them up a little, but no crust formed because they were too wet. The blue cheese dip was pretty chunky (which was a conscious decision on our part to provide texture). I also ate my meatballs with celery sticks because I needed the crunch. And I really enjoy the combination of buffalo wings, blue cheese and celery. It works for me. Alex took one bite of the celery and gave me the rest. Sometimes it's not such a bad thing that Alex doesn't like celery.
Recipes after the jump!
What do you do when you have an entire roast turkey breast (and then some) left over in the refrigerator? If you're Alex, you make club sandwiches. And since the Roast Turkey Breasts with Asian Spice Rub was quasi-Asian to begin with, you make quasi-Asian club sandwiches. To be perfectly honest, the only Asian (or quasi-Asian) elements to these sandwiches were the turkey breasts themselves, which were seasoned with an Asian spice rub of Sichuan peppercorns, star anise, clove, coriander, fennel and cinnamon, and the spicy mayo Alex put together, which was seasoned with sriracha and a pinch each of ground coriander and ground cumin. Otherwise, these sandwiches were basically traditional turkey clubs, which are a perfect lazy Sunday meal!
There is no real recipe here, although I can post the method we used for cooking the bacon in the oven. Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil and place a cooling rack on top. Lay the bacon strips out on top of the rack and then slide the pan into the oven. Turn the oven on to 400 degrees F and allow bacon to roast until they reach the desired level of crispness, about 20-25 minutes. It's almost too easy.
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!
I don't know why I am always experimenting with different salad recipes. I have a few go-to greens (baby arugula and big mix from 5 lbs of Dirt are the most common salad greens in our apartment) but we tend to mix it up with dressings and ingredients. I bought some nice blue cheese at my new favorite cheese shop last weekend (more on that later) and I have been trying to figure out what kind of salad to make with my cheese. I thought about getting some pears and doing roasted pears with blue cheese over salad greens, but decided to go with this salad because it used ingredients we already had in the apartment. My one complaint with the salad was that this salad dressing combined with the dried cranberries (which for the record were unsweetened) was a little sweet for me. I would probably cut back a little more on the amount of maple syrup or use a more bitter green. The big mix is fairly bitter because it has baby kale and chard and mustard greens in it, but it' not as bitter as some other greens. I definitely would tone the dressing down before using it with something as mild as baby spinach. When you got a bite that combined all of the ingredients the blue cheese and the toasted pecans really helped to cut through the sweetness of the dressing. But there were a few bites with just lettuce and the sweetness was a little overwhelming. I think there are other salads with blue cheese and fruit out there that do a better job of striking a balance between the pungent flavor of the blue cheese and the sweetness of the fruit or the dressing.
Recipe after the jump!
There are very few dishes that I am instantly completely and utterly enamored of. Dishes that I never want to change in any way. Dishes that are completely perfect as is. I had a good feeling about this meal, but I thought it had the potential to go wrong in a big way. I was fairly certain the Cumin Coriander Beef Patties would be good because those flavors are ones that we are pretty familiar with. We use a lot of cumin, cayenne and coriander in the apartment and we know they taste marvelous together. And let's be honest - ground beef is a pretty forgiving medium. How often have you had a truly bad hamburger? And they were very tasty - with a nice crust on the exterior and tender and aromatic interiors. If you look at the picture above you can see the flecks of cilantro and onion in the patties. Yum. But the Green Tomato Curry made me a little nervous - I figured it had the potential to either be surprising and delicious, or just plain weird. But I think Alex's word's said it all, "This... is awesome." And I concurred. It was amazing. The Green Tomato Curry had the most amazingly vibrant combination of tartness, heat and sweetness. I loved it. It was funky and delicious. It had a lot going on, but everything just worked together so... perfectly. I think this is the first Sri Lankan recipe we have ever attempted at home and it was a smashing success. Yay! I knew Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid wouldn't let me down. Strangely enough, earlier this week I had decided to do both of these recipes this week on different nights before I realized that the cookbook actually suggested serving them together. Pure genius. They really worked together, although I suppose you could serve the curry with a number of different kebob recipes or serve the patties with a number of different side dishes. They don't have to be served together; they just worked very nicely together. We served everything with frozen garlic naan from Trader Joe's, but I think the recipes would also work with basmati rice or roti. Anyway, I wish there was more to say about these recipes but there really isn't, except to say that if you like spicy dishes, you should make this one ASAP.
P.S. I know that neither of these dishes look all that impressive, but don't let that dissuade you from making them because they really are stunning. They just aren't very pretty.
Recipes after the jump!
Say hello to what might be my new favorite cabbage variety. There are a few reasons for my changing allegiance, including aesthetic ones - Savoy cabbage is way prettier than regular green cabbage. Plus, the leaves were much more tender than regular cabbage. It was also pretty sweet, although the chicken stock and the speck in this recipe masked the sweetness a little with their meaty, savory flavors. I'm sure if you simply sauteed some Savoy cabbage until lightly caramelized it would pack a lot of sweetness. I am going to have to buy a few more heads of Savoy cabbage at the farmers' market this fall and winter to experiment. As a side note, I know that I promised you guys that I would be making this recipe in my last post, Warm Mushroom Salad with Shallots and Sherry Vinegar, although I thought it would take me at least a few more days to get around to it. But we decided to scrap our original plans and make this sauteed cabbage recipe last night because it was a little chilly out so the warm savory cabbage sounded delightful and (more importantly) the Savoy cabbage was taking up a lot of space in the refrigerator. It was warm and comforting and very flavorful. Sauteing the cabbage in the chicken stock really imparted a lot of flavor into the cabbage. And every once in awhile you got a nice meaty bit of speck that gave the cabbage some of its smoky, porky flavor. That generous squirt of lemon juice right at the end gives the whole dish some brightness and acidity to counterbalance the heavier, meatier flavors of the stock and speck. Yum.
In the end, this simple little sauteed cabbage dish outshone the salmon we served with it. In the salmon's defense - this wasn't a really nice $20+ per pound piece of wild organic salmon. It was organic salmon, but it was farmed. I know, I know. It is my own fault for buying farmed salmon (which incidentally still cost about $14 per pound). But the wild salmon at the grocery store didn't look particularly nice so I decided to be lame and buy farmed salmon. Lesson learned - this particular salmon had literally no flavor whatsoever. I won't stray again.
Recipe after the jump!
