Red Cabbage Salad with Warm Pancetta-Balsamic Dressing

Sometimes my meal planning get a little weird.  Take this salad for instance.  We made it for lunch last Sunday.  We had 3/4 of a head of red cabbage leftover in the fridge from our shrimp tostadas and I wanted to do something different with it.  This seemed to fit the bill.  I wanted something salad-like, but a little more filling than slaw and I didn't want to go out and buy a dozen ingredients in order to make an Asian chicken salad.  So I poked around a bit online and this is what I came up with.  We still had to go out to buy the pancetta because we don't typically keep it in the apartment but I didn't need to buy (and then chop) a ton of veggies.  When we made this Saigon Chicken Salad for example, it took almost 30 minutes to prep and chop all of the ingredients.  The green papaya alone took forever.  The only things that required chopping here were the red cabbage itself and the pancetta, shallot, almonds and parsley.  I considered that pretty easy.  Granted, Alex did most of the chopping and prepping (although I did chop the cabbage) because I was doing work.  But it looked fairly easy to put together.  And it was tasty.  I liked the combination of different flavors and textures.  The sweetness of the currants and balsamic was a nice match for the crispy, salty, porky pancetta, the crunchy almonds and the crispness of the cabbage.  It worked on a number of fun and interesting levels.  One thing I will say - the leftover salad kind of creeped me out.  I brought it into work on Tuesday and the dressing had turned gritty and strange.  I had a few bites and tossed the rest.  Don't let that deter you from making the salad in the first place, but don't plan on making extra salad for leftovers. 

Recipe after the jump!

Roast Cauliflower and Arugula Salad with Bacon

What do you do when you know you are going to be traveling constantlyfor the next 2-3 weeks and (1) your fridge is full of random vegetables and (2) you know that due to traveling you will be eating burgers and chili on the mountain in California/Nevada, BBQ in Texas and other heavy meals, rather than salads and seafood?  If you're anything like me, you make random salads and/or random roast vegetables.  Or you get lazy and combine the two and top a bed of baby arugula with roast cauliflower.  And when you discover that you have some bacon left over from the Bacon Braised Cabbage you throw that in there too.  Sometimes my randomness works out and sometimes it just doesn't.  Luckily, this salad ended up working out really well.  There were a lot of textures and flavors that came together beautifully to make a nice salad.  Roasting the cauliflower in a 425 degree oven for 45 minutes made it nice and nutty and sweet and the sweetness was further augmented by the shallots and a scant teaspoon of honey.  The crispy bacon added a hit of wonderful smoky, porky flavor, which made the salad feel warm and rich.  Then there was the hit of acidity from the red wine vinegar, the peppery flavor of the arugula and the butteriness of lightly toasted pine nuts.  It was a winner for me - fulfilling the dual goals of clearing out the fridge and providing me with a moderately healthy (it would have been much healthier had we omitted the bacon, but bacon makes everything better) meal.

Recipe after the jump!

Bacon Braised Cabbage

I will be the first to admit that I have been in something of a blogging and cooking funk recently.  We have made several recipes lately (including a lackluster kale salad on Sunday and a few other things that aren't immediately coming to mind) that just haven't been worth posting.  And that makes me sad.  I almost didn't post this recipe either, but what the heck.  I know that cabbage isn't exactly groundbreaking, earthshattering stuff but I wanted to eat the cabbage in the fridge and was feeling a little lazy.  So we braised the cabbage very simply with some bacon, garlic, Worcestershire sauce, butter and chicken stock.  Et voila - dinner is served.  Before I go any further I must admit that this was not my favorite cabbage recipe we have ever prepared.  If we are sticking with braised or sauteed cabbage, I thought Thomas Keller's Sauteed Savoy Cabbage with Speck and Lemon was richer (without feeling heavy) and much more flavorful.  And if we are branching out to recipes that included cabbage, I would say I preferred this Pasta with Caramelized Cabbage, Anchovies and Bread Crumbs and this Vietnamese Cabbage and Egg Stir-Fry.  We also make a number of variations on Asian chicken salads that include cabbage and are quite delicious but I am going to ignore them for now because cabbage plays far less of a role in those preparations.  This cabbage was good, but we had to add hot sauce to give it a little extra flavor.  Otherwise it was just kind of... blah.  The Worcestershire sauce was an interesting touch and I do enjoy the combination of cabbage, chicken stock and bacon, but it didn't really seem to come together here.  And it just felt really heavy, which, if you ask me, defeats the purpose of eating cabbage for dinner. 

Recipe after the jump!

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!

Roast Brussels Sprouts and Cauliflower with Maple Syrup, Bacon and Cayenne

We found ourselves in the interesting position yesterday afternoon of having a half serving each of cauliflower and brussels sprouts in the fridge left over from the Brussels Sprout Fried Rice with Crispy Cauliflower.  I was trying to figure out how to use those vegetables individually (I was going to make a pizza with the brussels sprouts and some bacon or speck), but I couldn't figure out what I wanted to do with the pretty yellow cauliflower.  And then I decided, why not throw them both together and roast them in a single dish.  Genius.  My initial thought was to make a riff on the Momofuku Roasted Cauliflower with Fish Sauce Vinaigrette and make a batch that included both brussels sprouts and cauliflower.  We make that recipe with both ingredients separately, why wouldn't it work with them combined?  Easy peasy.  But we didn't have mint or Rice Krispies and we had a nice piece of slab bacon in the refrigerator just begging to be used.  So I decided to roast the veggies with bacon, maple syrup and cayenne.  Alex asked if I wanted to add garlic and/or onion, but I decided that I wanted to keep it as simple as possible.  I really liked our roast veggies - but then again, I always like roast veggies (particularly roast brussels sprouts and cauliflower).  And just like always, Alex liked the veggies but wasn't as happy with them as I was.  He doesn't mind roast veggies, but unlike me he never really craves them.  I really like the combination of sweet, salty and spicy flavors in this dish.  My love for those flavor combinations shouldn't be any surprise to anyone since I have made a number of brussels sprouts dishes with bacon and various spicy sauces in the past.  It's not as spicy, exotic or audaciously flavored as the Fatty 'Cue Brussels Sprouts or the Brussels Sprouts with Kimchi Puree and Bacon, but our was tasty and a lot easier to put together. 

Recipe after the jump!

Peach and Mixed Greens Salad

I found this recipe on Epicurious when I was looking for a non-dessert way to use up the fresh peaches I bought at the farmers' market.  The recipe sounded mildly interesting - I liked the combination of the pancetta and the peaches with the arugula and ricotta salata.  In the end, this dish couldn't hold a candle to the Grilled Peach Panzanella we made last summer.  Everything about that salad was just wonderful.  This salad was good, but it never approached wonderful.  It just didn't quite come together for me.  Alex's main complaint about the salad (which I agree with, although it wouldn't have been my biggest complaint) was that sauteing the peaches in a pan with evoo and the rendered fat from the pancetta made the peaches have a greasy/oily mouthfeel.  He would have preferred to wrap the peaches in pancetta and then roast them over a cooling rack on top of a rimmed baking sheet (similar to how you can roast bacon in the oven) because that way the pancetta fat would have dripped off the peaches and would have obviated the need for the additional evoo.  I suggested maybe grilling the pancetta-wrapped peaches for a similar effect.  Either way, it wasn't my favorite peach salad (although it was far from terrible and we ate it all) and I doubt we will be making it again.  Oh, one more thing, you definitely want to use toothpicks to secure your pancetta.  The recipe doesn't call for them but otherwise your pancetta ends up falling off all over the place and not on your peaches.  We would have used toothpicks, but we ran out.

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!

Penne with Cauliflower and Bacon

Sorry everyone.  I know I have been a little delinquent.  Again.  But in my defense, last week was a very busy week at work (although we did find time to cook a few meals that I am finally getting around to posting now).  So I'm hoping to get three posts up today - this pasta, some skirt steak tacos, and a yummy quinoa, spinach and mushroom dish.  If you have the time, stay tuned for more posts!

I'm posting this pasta recipe first because I think of the dishes we have made in the few weeks, this one made me the happiest.  It was a combination of items in our fridge/pantry - leftover homemade Italian-Style Bread Crumbs, pasta, bacon, parsley and cauliflower.  And have I mentioned that I have been obsessed with cauliflower lately?  No?  Well I totally am.  It's delicious.  And I am equally obsessed with those Italian-Style Bread Crumbs.  They are fairly easy to make and make such a difference in your cooking.  Anyway, this pasta was quite tasty and easy to put together, which made me very happy.  We just threw together a bunch of ingredients in the fridge/pantry and voila!  The combination of flavors really worked together nicely.  In each bite you got a little heat from the red pepper flakes, some salty bite from the cheese and the bacon, the wonderful porky flavor of the bacon, and a punch of flavor and texture from the bread crumbs.  Yum.  It was a fantastically hearty, yet delicious dish, one that I will definitely make again in the future. 

Recipes 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!

Cauliflower Soup with Pecorino Romano and Truffle Oil

Somehow Monday has become the night of white soup.  Last week we made congee and this week, cauliflower soup.  I'm not sure where I got the bee in my bonnet, but I have been wanting to make cauliflower soup for some time now.  I think my obsession with cauliflower soup stemmed from a shot glass full of truffle-scented cauliflower soup that we were served as an amuse bouche at Eighty-One almost two years ago.  It was such a lovely mouthful of soup that I have been thinking about it ever since.  I have had cauliflower soup served as an amuse at other restaurants as well (it seems to be a rather common amuse bouche here in NYC), but none were quite as good as that first one.  Speaking of Eighty-One, I'm still pretty depressed that it closed.  Moving on.  I have been on the lookout for a recipe that looked easy, but flavorful.  I have to say that the truffle oil is what did it for me here.  I love the combination of truffle oil and cauliflower.  And I love bacon with cauliflower.  So it sounded like the best combination of recipes/flavors ever!  But I'm not sure that bacon, cauliflower and truffle oil were the most successful combination in this soup.  The entire soup was imbued with this subtle bacon-y flavor (which I usually love), but thought that it was too much like every other soup we make with bacon in it.  It didn't stand out and didn't work as well with the truffle oil.  It also overpowered the subtle flavor of the cauliflower.  The entire pot of soup just tasted like any really rich, creamy, slightly bacon-y soup.  It could almost have been loaded baked potato soup (or whatever that soup is called), except for the occasional whiff of the truffle oil.  I think if I were to make the soup again I would leave the bacon out entirely and try to coax out more flavor from the cheese and truffle oil.  I would also roast the cauliflower, rather than simmering it in the stock, to intensify the flavor of the cauliflower itself.  I also think that the soup would be improved (both aesthetically and flavor-wise) by the addition of some fresh chives sprinkled on top. 

Sadly, this soup didn't make much of a lasting impression, but it did teach me some valuable lessons about cauliflower soup.  I guess I will have to keep looking for the perfect cauliflower soup recipe - one that can live up to the memory of that cauliflower soup at Eighty-One.

Recipe 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!

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!

Easy North Carolina-Style Half Picnic Shoulder and Spinach with Collards Seasoning

I will give you two guesses as to who picked this recipe.  I handed Alex the cookbook last week and told him to pick a recipe for us to try.  Both of the recipes he picked were for pork shoulder - Oven BBQed Picnic Shoulder and Easy North Carolina-Style Half Picnic Shoulder.  I picked the less complicated one of the two.  So I guess that means we both picked the recipe, but as with most pork recipes, Alex was the driving force behind it.  So this is our second attempt at North Carolina-style pulled pork and our third attempt at cooking a pork shoulder this year.  First we made Slow Cooker Pulled Pork (although it took us a little while to post about it).  Then we made Jalapeno-Roast Pork.  After we make this pork shoulder I might need to take a slight break from making any more pork shoulder for at least a little while.  Then again, summer is perfect pulled pork/BBQ weather, so we might have one more pork shoulder in us (perhaps the Oven BBQed Picnic Shoulder) before we call it quits.  I was going to serve this pork with some coleslaw, because I love pulled pork and coleslaw, but I decided that since we had Asian Winter Slaw for lunch yesterday, that was coleslaw overkill.  So instead I elected to make faux-collards from another Lee Bros recipe.  That sounds like a good Southern meal, right?  

This dish is crazy rich.  And I mean CRAZY rich.  I think if we had made sandwiches and served the pork with a coleslaw and a vinegar-based bbq sauce, that would have done a lot to cut the richness.  The sauce that you serve the pork with is sweet rather than sour, which doesn't do a lot to cut through the fatty pork.  I will probably serve the pork again, but I will come up with another sauce (most likely a traditional eastern North Carolina-style barbecue sauce).  So that is how we're going to eat the leftovers (more on the leftovers later).  This cooking method kept the pork very moist, which I appreciated.  Alex loved the nuggets if crispy skin that were sprinkled throughout the pork.  I thought that they tasted fine, but they got stuck in my teeth.  And that was just a tad too much fat for me.  I thought there would be more vinegar flavor to cut through the richness of the pork, considering the pork was marinated in 2 cups of white vinegar and then basted with the vinegar-based marinade for 3 hours.  And let me tell you, every time you opened up the oven to baste the pork, you got hit with a blast of vinegar.  But I really didn't taste the vinegar at all until the pork had sat on the counter for an hour or so and dried out.  Actually, the pork that we pulled and set aside for leftovers was arguably far more flavorful - both in terms of spice and vinegar level, than the pork that we initially served ourselves for dinner.  Granted, that pork was a lot drier than the pork we ate for dinner, but I thought that given the difference in flavor I would take the drier, more flavorful meat.  So I guess the lesson I learned from that is to let the meat rest longer after you pull it out of the oven (we let it sit for 10 minutes, but maybe we should have let it sit a little longer) and then pull it and let it rest a few more minutes before serving.  As for the spinach, it was very Southern and it really did remind me of collards.  Alex said that he liked the pork better than the spinach and I agree with that.  But if we are really being honest here, since when can spinach compete with pulled pork? 

Recipes after the jump!

Fatty 'Cue Brussels Sprouts

This is among the weirder recipes that I have ever made.  Just look at the list of ingredients - Thai bird chilis, coriander seeds, brussels sprouts, bacon and maple syrup.   Who comes up with these things?  I'm certainly not that creative with my flavor combination (although I guess most people would call that list of ingredients insane rather than creative).  But I love Fatty Crab, and since this recipe came from their sister barbecue restaurant Fatty Cue, I figured it had to be good.  Perhaps a little strange, but good.  And having eaten the dish, I am sticking with that assessment.  I really liked the addition of crushed coriander seeds and maple syrup.  The coriander seeds gave the dish some slightly floral peppery kick.  And maple syrup provided a hint of sweetness in the background that rounds out the dish nicely and balanced out the heat of the Thai chilis.  And then there's the bacon for some porky goodness.  Make sure to crisp it up in the pan in the beginning, because there is nothing sadder than flaccid bacon.  And the bacon just gets thrown back in at the very end, so it's certainly not going to crisp up then.

Word of warning - if you don't like things spicy, skip the second Thai chili (or remove the seeds from both).  Because this dish has some kick.

Recipe after the jump!

Country French Omelet

What do you do when you have a dozen incredibly fresh extra large eggs from Knoll Crest Farms and D'Artagnan Uncured Applewood Smoked Bacon?  I was originally planning on making plain old bacon and eggs, or a homemade bacon, egg and cheese biscuit, but when I saw this recipe for a Country French Omelet in my Barefoot Contessa cookbook I decided to make that instead.  Making homemade biscuits the night after making homemade flatbread just seemed overly ambitious.  I also had some really nice spring greens from the farmer's market, so I figured an omelet and a salad would be a great weeknight meal.  Alex was shocked when I said that the potatoes in the omelet were perfectly cooked and kind of yummy.  I think that might have been the first time I have ever complimented a potato.  But they were nice and tender without being mushy or mealy.  They also gave the omelet some heft and substance without making the dish feel super heavy.  Cooking the potatoes in the bacon fat gave them an extra layer of flavor that I appreciated.  This is one of the more labor intensive omelets that I have ever made, but I think it was worth it.  And I really appreciated it that I didn't have to attempt to flip the omelet (because I tear my omelets 50% of the time) and could just throw it in the oven like a frittata and let it rip.  I might actually adopt this method for all future omelets because it really is that much easier.

Recipe after the jump!

Salt-Roasted Salmon and Frisee Salad with Lardons and Poached Eggs

I seem to be in something of a rut these days.  I keep cooking meals from the same cookbooks or genres, over and over and over again.  It occurred to me the other day that it has been some time since I last cooked salmon (or fish of any sort if I really stop to think about it).  We cook shrimp fairly often, but to my recollection we haven't cooked fish once in 2011.  How sad is that?  Instead we have been cooking tons and tons of meat.  For the next few months I resolve to cook more seafood and vegetables, and less meat.  We used to be really good about cooking vegetarian meals and seafood at least once each a week, but we have failed lately.  Granted, it is winter so there aren't a ton of fruits and veggies in season, but what is my excuse for not making fish for at least the past 3 months?!  There isn't one!

So I found this recipe the other day when I saw the recipe for the Pan-Roasted NY Strip in my Tom Colicchio cookbook.  I have never tried salt-roasting anything, but I figured why not give it a shot?  So the salmon was perfectly cooked, with a lovely crispy skin.  And you know how much I love a good crispy salmon skin.  I really enjoyed it, except that in certain bites I couldn't get past the salt level.  I'm not sure if there is a way to remove more of the salt from the flesh of the salmon, but some bites were just so salty.  We tried brushing it off as instructed, but there was a certain amount of salt that was just stuck on there and impossible to remove.  Perhaps we didn't pat the salmon dry enough or perhaps we should have tried brushing the salt off with a basting brush or a clean kitchen towel.  Either way, we did our best to remove the salt from the salmon but we just couldn't quite get enough off.  As for the salad, I was thinking it would be nice to have a traditional French bistro salad to go with our salmon.  I wanted something a step or two up from our typical arugula salad (partially because we already had arugula salads with our dinner twice this week), something with a little bitterness and richness.  I wish I had added a little Dijon mustard to the dressing to give it a little more acidity and richness.  It would also have thickened the dressing just a little bit.  The red wine vinegar gave it a little acidity, but I really could have gone for just a little more.  I also wish we had toasted a little bread to serve on the side.  So if we could have made just those few tweaks, I think it would have been a phenomenal bistro-esque meal. 

Recipe after the jump!

Smokey Bacon Mac N Cheese

I love mac n cheese.  It does not love me (which has something to do with the fact that I am lactose intolerant), but every once in awhile I have to indulge.  This mac n cheese was inspired by one that my friend Kelly ordered at a place called Tryst at Delray Beach when we were down in Florida.  I have put bacon in mac n cheese before, but not in a long time and I didn't remember being that excited about the end result.  But this Tryst version was so delicious that I figured I had to make another I wanted to make sure that the mac n cheese didn't end up being all about the bacon.  I kind of felt like last time the bacon had taken center stage and ended up missing plain old mac n cheese.  To play up the smoky flavor of the bacon I decided to use a blend of smoked cheeses that I bought at Trader Joe's, which includes smoked cheddar, smoked gouda, smoked mozzarella, and smoked provolone.  I supplemented the smoked cheese blend with some nice sharp NY cheddar that I grated because I didn't want the mac n cheese to be altogether too smokey.  The basic mac n cheese recipe I used was Martha Stewart's Perfect Macaroni and Cheese.  Awhile ago I stumbled across several blogs (including Diner's Journal in the NY Times) that claimed that her recipe was the legitimately the perfect mac n cheese - perhaps even the best recipe ever.  And it was a very simple recipe, one that I could play around with and change as I saw fit, which made it ideal for this kind of experimentation!

I don't know that this was the best mac n cheese that I have every tasted, but it was really good.  I loved the homemade garlic and herb bread crumb topping.  That might have been my absolute favorite part of the dish.  I might use the herb crumb topping on all mac n cheese recipes going forward.  I am usually way too lazy to make homemade bread crumbs, but after experiencing just how delicious homemade bread crumbs toasted in evoo can be in Mario Batali's Spaghetti con la Sarde, I knew we had to go the extra mile here.  And it was very worth it.  The cheese sauce in this mac n cheese is gooey, rich, and super cheesy.  It's not as creamy as some other mac n cheese recipes I have tried, but that is not necessarily a bad thing.  And I can't forget the bacon.  You can definitely taste the bacon in every bite, but it isn't overwhelming.  When you get a bite with bacon in it you get a hit of porky, salty goodness, but otherwise it just gives the dish some extra smokey goodness with a hint of bacon.  Yum.

Recipe after the jump!

Roasted Brussels Sprouts and Potatoes with Bacon

So Alex felt the need to point out to me today that that brussels sprouts are spelled like the city of Brussels, with an "s," and not brussel sprouts.  And I of course responded that I knew that and that I always spelled them "B-R-U-S-S-E-L-S" sprouts, to which he pointed out about a zillion instances in which I called them "brussels sprouts" and "brussel sprouts" interchangably in the same post.  Oops.  Apparently I am terribly inconsistent.  But I will do my best to be more consistent in this post.  And I am creating this post with a caveat - I made these brussels sprouts two weeks ago before work got absolutely crazy (and by crazy I mean I haven't been able to leave the office before 10 pm to midnight in over a week and therefore have not eaten a single meal at home since last Sunday, let alone cooked one) and am only getting around to posting about them now because I have a brief moment of calm and sanity.

If you can't tell, I love brussels sprouts.  They are fantastic.  This might not be my favorite variation on brussels sprouts, but it was a good one.  Who can resist bacon and crispy roasted potatoes served with nutty roasted brussels sprouts?  By itself the dish makes a perfectly hearty meal for two people, or would be a nice side for a family of four. 

Recipe after the jump!

Brussels Sprouts with Kimchi Puree and Bacon

So to address my lack of Asian (or Asian-inspired) recipes of late, I decided to make a brussels sprouts recipe from the Momofuku cookbook.  Now I know that brussels sprouts aren't an inherently Asian ingredient.  In fact, I would be shocked if they ever turned up in any form of Asian cuisine.  But these are tossed in kimchi puree, so that has to count for something, right?  Granted, there is bacon and butter in there, but come on.  You have to give me points for trying, especially since I didn't get home from work until about 8:45 pm tonight with the brussels sprouts.  Luckily I had Alex at home cutting up the bacon batons and making the kimchi puree.  I really do need to use this cookbook more.  When you flip through it there are so many fabulously interesting recipes!  And most of them are at least nominally Asian, which goes perfectly with my renewed desire to cook lots of Asian (or Asian-inspired) recipes.  Next up, the Pan-Roasted Asparagus with Poached Egg and Miso Butter (even though asparagus are not exactly in season right now) or the Pan-Roasted Bouchot Mussels with OS.  Yum.  

I think I will cut down on the amount of butter next time, because I didn't really think it added much to the brussels, except to make them a little soggy.  I would have preferred that the brussels remained charred and crispier.  So maybe I will halve the amount of butter next time and char the brussels sprouts just a few more minutes.  Since our brussels sprouts were pretty small, I only cooked them for 10 minutes once I returned them to the oven.  Next time I will go at least 12 minutes, but probably the entire 15 minutes, and then cut down on the butter.  But I loved the combination of the brussels sprouts, the kimchi, and the bacon.  It's not a flavor combination that would ever occur to me on my own, but they are awesome together.

We served our delicious brussels sprouts with some sunny-side up eggs with runny yolks that we drizzled with soy sauce and topped with more of the kimchi puree.  I think that together they made the perfect meal. 

Recipe after the jump!

Baked Eggs with Bacon and Spinach

 

Tonight was another one of those nights where I had no inspiration for dinner, except that I had a few recipes dogeared in the September issue of Bon Appetit.  After looking through those recipes, the only one that we could make with the ingredients we had on hand was this recipe for Baked Eggs with Bacon and Spinach.  I have this thing for baked eggs.  I have made several different varieties with different cooking temperatures, different cooking times, and most importantly, different mix-ins.  One of my favorite versions of baked eggs was this Oeufs en Cocotte, which is creamier and cheesier than this version.  I also really love making baked eggs with Mexican chorizo, minced garlic, scallions, and cilantro - which is amazing when served with little toast soldiers made out of cornbread or a nice rustic bread.

This version of baked eggs was very good.  I liked the combination of eggs, bacon and spinach, but like Alex said, it was missing something.  It was all very tasty, but a little one note.  However, I really liked the idea of toasting the English muffins and layering them at the bottom of the ramekin so that they can really soak up all of the eggy, creamy goodness without becoming overly soggy. 

Recipe after the jump!