Maple-Roasted Delicata Squash and Spinach Catalan-Style

If you're like me, you have no idea what delicata squash is.  But we ended up with a couple of random squash from the CSA and had to figure out first what it was and then how to cook it.  So I handed a squash to Alex and told him to start Googling.  A few minutes and one Wikipedia entry on squash varieties later, Alex told me that the squash we had been given was a sweet potato squash aka delicata squash.  And just for the record, there are way more varieties of squash out there than I realized!  I mean, who has ever heard of turban squash?  Anyway, we decided to simply roast the delicata squash as if it were a butternut squash with maple syrup, butter, and brown sugar.  As with roasting butternut squash, you end up with an amazingly flavorful layer of squash, with a bland layer down below that never came into contact with the maple syrup mixture.  Alex called it the "Tale of Two Squashes."  Yes, my husband is a dork.  But that's ok, because so am I.  It takes one to know one I guess.  Back to the squash.  Those bites you get where the sugar and syrup formed a nice caramelized crust on the squash are simply amazing.  I highly recommend using just a pinch of cayenne pepper on the squash because I think it really makes the flavors come together.  Otherwise you would just end up with a really sweet squash dish, without any complexity to it.

To go with the squash we decided to cook up the spinach that also came from our CSA.  We have a recipe for Spinach Catalan-Style from Spain: A Culinary Road Trip by Mario Batali that I really enjoy because it is tasty, easy, and best of all, it comes together in minutes.  I really enjoy the combination of the buttery pine nuts, the sweet currants, and the fresh sauteed spinach.  The first time I made the recipe I was a little skeptical that it didn't contain garlic or onions.  I quickly realized that it didn't need either.  This is probably one of the quickest and easiest side dishes in our repertoire.

Recipe after the jump!

Grilled Zucchini with Red Wine Vinaigrette

I have been sitting on this recipe for a few days now.  Not because it wasn't good (it was) or even because I was so busy that I didn't have time to post it (I did have time).  I just got lazy.  And then I forgot all about it.  Oops.  Luckily it occurred to me this afternoon that I hadn't posted this recipe yet.  So here I am.  Grilled zucchini is always a wonderful side dish.  I love when grilled zucchini and squash are lightly tossed with some sort of olive oil-based vinaigrette and served on the side.  Unfortunately, we don't a grill in NYC.  So I have to make do with my grill pan, which actually works pretty well (smoky apartment notwithstanding), although you miss out on that nice smoky grilled flavor that the grill imparts.  Oh well.

This salad was a last minute addition to our dinner.  I had meant to make an heirloom tomato salad, but it turned out that my tomatoes were bad.  Actually, if we are being truly honest, I dropped the gorgeous heirloom tomatoes on the ground on my way home from the farmer's market.  And they exploded.  Ka-boom.  No more heirloom tomato salad for me.  So I rummaged through the fridge and came up with some zucchini that I had originally bought to make another batch of zucchini bread.  And after a few seconds of staring aimlessly at the zucchini, this salad was born.  This is a rather acidic vinaigrette, so if you like your vinaigrettes a little smoother, you are going to want to cut down on the amount of red wine vinegar and adjust the ratio of evoo to vinegar.  The dish we were eating this with was rather rich, so I wanted something bright and acidic to cut through that richness.  I think this salad would have benefitted from the addition of some crumbled goat cheese, or something to give the salad a little creaminess, and to provide a little textural contrast.  Perhaps a ricotta salata would have worked.  Unfortunately, I was out of both.  I also would have loved a hint of fresh basil, oregano or chives to give the dish a little something extra.  But we didn't have any of those either.  Also, if I had more time I would have made a marinade that was less acidic and allowed the zucchini to marinate for an hour to gently soak up more flavor.  But we were only 10 minutes away from eating when I conceived of this dish.  Considering our fridge was fairly empty and I had to pull this salad out of nowhere in 10 minutes, I think I did pretty well!

Recipe after the jump!

Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich Cookies

The other night I had a dream about peanut butter and jelly and I woke up with the thought stuck in my head that I absolutely had to make peanut butter and jelly cookies.  Don't ask me where my dream came from, or what else happened in the dream because I have absolutely no idea.  I basically rolled over in bed and told Alex that I had a dream about cookies.  Then I immediately got out of bed and went to look up recipes.  I found the 'wichcraft recipe for Peanut Butter Sandwich Cookies and decided to modify the recipe a little and add some jelly

So this might sound like a strange recipe, but these very well might be my new favorite cookies.  The peanut butter cookies themselves are delicious, with a slightly dry and crumbly texture (which is a little like shortbread) and a little crunch/texture from the toasted oats.  The cookies aren't that sweet, and are almost a little salty.  Then you get a mouthful of the creamy peanut butter filling combined with the jelly and it's a total epiphany.  It has that whole salty-sweet thing going on that I love, plus I think the combination is every child's absolute fantasy.  Now if you don't like peanut butter (and I have been informed that some people just don't like it), these are definitely not going to be your new fave cookie recipe.  You might want to stick to chocolate chip.  Or anything else really.  But if you love peanut butter as much as Alex and I do, then you need to try these.  They are fun and totally different from your typical bake-sale cookie selection, but once you try one you will be in love.

Recipe after the jump!

Cornflake Chicken Katsu with Tonkatsu Dipping Sauce

I discovered tonkatsu (panko-crusted pork cutlets or sometimes chicken breasts served with a sweet dipping sauce) while I was living in China.  Since coming back to the US I have had far less opportunity to enjoy tonkatsu than I did while abroad.  Actually, the opportunity still exists, but the variety of Japanese food options here in the US far exceeds what I experienced in China, where my options were basically limited to conveyer belt sushi, various types of udon, and tonkatsu.  Here in NYC I can enjoy ramen at Ippudo, soba at Soba Nippon, tempura udon at Momoya, sushi everywhere (Sushi Yasuda if you're a purist or Sasabune if you want a really interesting omikase experience), yakitori at Yakitori Totto, etc.  Somehow tonkatsu and katsu-don (tonkatsu served over rice with an egg on top) never seem to make the cut.  But I have been thinking about chicken katsu recently, so I decided to make it at home.  I find that a combination of panko and cornflakes provides a better crust than just panko if you're pan-frying or baking your chicken.  I'm sure if you deep fried the chicken it wouldn't make a difference either way, but we all know how I feel about deep frying at home.

I really like baking chicken cutlets with a variety of different crusts, and serving them with a variety of dipping sauces.  This chicken was good, and an interesting departure from our usual chicken cutlets, but Alex and I both agreed that we preferred the Spicy "Fried" Chicken Cutlets with Honey-Tabasco Sauce and the Cornmeal-Crusted Chicken Breasts with Honey-Mustard Dipping Sauce.

Recipe after the jump!

Mango Chutney, Prosciutto and Paneer Pizza

Apparently this recipe comes from the winner of The Next Food Network Star, Aarti Sequeira.  I was just browsing the Food Network website and saw some reference "The Pizza Recipe."  So of course I clicked on it.  I love pizza and if there exists a recipe so delicious as to be called "The Pizza Recipe" I want to know what it is.  At first I was a little confused by the ingredient list and then I decided that the combination of those ingredients and flavors sounded like it could be really good.  Then I read the reviews and while most of them were endorsements of Aarti and not the dish itself, it got me intrigued enough to try making the pizza myself.  I figured Alex would be excited by the recipe for, if nothing else, the fact that this pizza is topped with prosciutto.  Don't get me wrong - Alex enjoys Indian food, as well as pizza, but give him prosciutto (or serrano ham) and he is a very happy husband.  Luckily we have prosciutto and I know exactly where to go for paneer cheese, frozen naan, and sweet mango chutney.

This pizza was really easy to make, which I generally expect from Food Network recipes, and was very tasty, but needs some work (which I also expect from most Food Network recipes).  It needs a little tweaking to really make it shine.  We tweaked some while cooking, but I wish we had tweaked a little more.  Alex and I both wished that the pizza had more heat to it.  We used the 1/4-tsp or crushed red pepper flakes that we specified below, but in the future I will probably bump it up to about a 1/2-tsp (at the very least).  We both also thought that the pizza would benefit from more ground cumin to add a little smokiness. All things considered I thought it was an easy and interesting lunch, and would make a nice quick and easy dinner if served with a side salad.

Recipe after the jump!

Eggplant Caponata and Salumi

While out running errands this afternoon, Alex and I decided to purchase a few varieties of salumi from Salumeria Rosi.  We tasted several varieties of sausages and prosciutto and picked out four to take home with us - spicy soppressata, sweet cacciatorino, 12-month aged prosciutto, and 24-month aged prosciutto.  If you live on the UWS, or really anywhere in NYC, Salumeria Rosi is worth a visit just for their salumi.  It is amazing.  If you have any interest in salumi at all and decide to eat at the restaurant (rather than taking some salumi to go) you need to order the Selezione de Salumiere so you can try as many varieties as possible.  Yum.

To accompany our salumi, Alex and I decided to make some caponata and rosemary focaccia.  I can't say that I have ever eaten or made caponata before, but there was some in the display case at Salumeria Rosi that looked good, plus I knew it would use up the eggplants hanging out in our vegetable drawer.  Done deal.  I briefly considered making some sort of heirloom tomato salad with the tomatoes I picked up at the farmer's market today to go with the salumi, but decided that the caponata just sounded better (regardless of the fact that I had never tasted it before, I had some vague idea of what went into it and how it should taste).  From the endless hours of Food Network I watched while studying in law school I knew that caponata is a Sicilian dish and should be both sweet and sour and would contain eggplant, tomatoes, and balsamic vinegar.  So I went home and turned to Mario Batali to tell me what to do to make caponata.  I knew that there had to be a recipe for caponata in at least one of the four Batali cookbooks we own.  Luckily, we found a recipe for caponata in Molto Italiano.  Even more luckily, we had everything we needed to make it without another trip to the grocery.  I also took a brief look at a few other recipes online, but decided to just stick with Mario and see how it turned out.

So never having had caponata before, this was everything I hoped it would be and more.  It was delicious.  Sweet and sour from the sugar, dried currants and balsamic (just like I expected) but also wonderfully spicy from the crushed red pepper flakes.  The recipe also called for cinnamon and unsweetened cocoa, which sounded super strange.  But the spices smelled amazing while the caponata was cooking and helped give the caponata serious flavor and complexity.  I forgot to add the pine nuts (which neither of us noticed until I went back to the recipe to add it to the blog), but I didn't miss them.  Although the pine nuts would have added some butteriness and some crunch to the caponata, it was still perfectly delicious without them.  Unfortunately, our focaccia wasn't quite as successful.  Alex called it the "focaccia pretzel" because it was dry and dense, and had more of a crust than any focaccia I have ever tried before.  It still tasted good, but it wasn't exactly a focaccia.  I don't think we let it rise long enough, and I also think that I should have added more evoo to the dough.  Don't get me wrong.  We still ate it.  And it was nice topped with the caponata, but it wasn't focaccia.  Oh well.  The salumi and the caponata more than made up for the wonky focaccia.

Recipe (and pictures of the salumi) after the jump!

Unda Chicken Kati Rolls

 

Since I graduated from NYU I have had very few chances to head back down to Kati Roll for their Unda Chicken Kati Roll.  And man I loved that roll.  So now I have decided to try and make it at home.  On our last shopping trip to Kalustyans we picked up a package of their fresh parathas so I have been looking forward to making kati rolls ever since.  I know I have talked about making homemade kati rolls for some time now, and I have made variations on the kati roll several times, Scallion Pancake Roll-Ups with Five Spice Duck Breast for instance.  But now that we have parathas we are making actual, honest-to-God kati rolls.  Or at least my version of the same.  

I will admit that when making any Indian dish, my first resource that I always turn to is Madhur Jaffrey.  So for this dish I looked at her recipes for Tandoori Chicken and Cilantro Chutney for inspiration.  I knew I wanted to marinate the chicken in yogurt because by marinating the chicken in yogurt you get wonderfully succulent chicken, even when you use boneless skinless chicken breasts.  The flavors I taste most in the chicken itself are ginger and lemon.  Alex said he tasted turmeric.  I mainly added the turmeric for the lovely warm, golden color it gives the marinade, but sure.  I thought the chicken would be a little spicier than it was, but that isn't really a complaint.  We served the chicken with a rather incendiary homemade chutney so it's a good thing that both elements weren't super spicy.  In Alex's words, the kati rolls were "quite tasty, but messy."  I would agree with both of those things.  I thought that these kati rolls were really good, but not quite as good as the ones I used to enjoy at Kati Roll downtown.  I'm not exactly sure what was missing, but some integral element of their unda chicken was missing.  I think I have to go back to Kati Roll to refresh my memory in order to really recreate their dish.  I have all of the basic flavors and concepts, but I am missing something...

Recipe after the jump!