When it's cold outside soup sounds like the best thing in the whole wide world. And I'm not usually a chili fan, but there is nothing more seasonally appropriate than a bowl of steaming hot (both in temperature and in spice level) chili when it is insanely cold out. This week was absolutely perfect for chili. Since I don't like pinto beans (or a ton of beans of any sort) in my chili I usually end up defaulting to a chicken or turkey chili with white beans, but I thought this green chili with pork recipe sounded like an interesting bean-free alternative when I stumbled across it sometime last winter. And it was interesting. I wish the flavor of the cilantro came through a little more clearly, but the chili had a nice spice level and the flavor overall was quite good provided that you like pork (it was quite porky). I loved the substitution of hominy for beans because in my humble opinion, hominy and corn are way better than beans. You might or might not agree with me there, but beans just don't do it for me. I think you could totally lighten this chili up by adding more vegetables - some zucchini would have worked nicely. Another bonus for me was that the chili didn't need to simmer for hours and hours to develop its flavors, although a little more simmering wouldn't have hurt. Overall it was a nice hearty winter dinner!
Recipe after the jump!
In my last trip to the grocery store I decided that I needed to buy more vegetables that get overlooked in our apartment. I wasn't looking for vegetables that we never make, but for vegetables that we make from time to time, but with no real regularity. Broccoli rabe was an obvious candidate, as was cabbage. And I threw in some beets for good measure because I love them and as far as I am concerned, we don't make them enough. But somehow none of our usual recipes appealed. So I decided to try this recipe for Moroccan Beet Salad with Cinnamon from Serious Eats. I wasn't sure if I would be serving the beets by themselves or over a bed of greens, but as soon as I took my first bite of the beets I knew I wanted to serve them as a salad. So I threw together a quick salad with what we had in the fridge - a few large handfuls of mixed greens, toasted hazelnuts and some Coach Farm goat ricotta. And I topped it all with the beets and their dressing. Speaking of the dressing, it worked really nicely as salad dressing - I loved the aroma and warmth of the cinnamon. I had never paired cinnamon and beets together before but I liked the combination a lot. I have never added sugar to my beets before, but I thought together with the lemon juice it amped up the sweetness just enough without making the beets too sweet. The tangy goat ricotta was a nice counterpoint to the sweetness of the dressing, although you could use any number of cheeses instead of goat ricotta (which I admit is not exactly the easiest thing to find at the grocery store). The hazelnuts provided a really nice crunch, although it wouldn't be the end of the world if you omited them in the future. And I'm sure some toasted pinenuts would work nicely too and would give the salad a nice buttery flavor. Obviously you could serve the beets as is, without the rest of the salad, but I thought they were really nice this way.
Recipe after the jump!
I have a lot of thoughts about this lamb dish, but I'm not sure exactly how to phrase them, while still being fair to the recipe. Most importantly, I think the problems with this recipe were in large part caused by the cooking method we used. The gas broiler on our oven only has one setting (kill) so we were afraid to try to broil the lamb chops and end up with little lumps of lamb coal instead of lightly charred lamb chops. So we tried to sear them up in our cast iron. Only they fit a little too snugly so we basically sauteed them instead of searing them. And most of the glaze ended up stuck to the pan, rather than to the lamb. If I had my way in the future (and if my broiler situation were a little different), I would broil the chops to caramelize the glaze and char it up a little. Or I would grill them. The smoky flavor either of those options would impart would do a lot to give the lamb chops more depth of flavor and provide a nice complimentary flavor to the glaze itself. Because if I am being honest, the glaze really was interesting - a little funky, a little sweet and floral - and I think it would have been very nice if it had only stuck to the lamb itself. I'm not sure that it had the potential to be my favorite lamb glaze out there, but I liked it because it was different. Too often with lamb you end up with one of two flavor combinations - mint or herbs. And this was a large departure from either of those typical combos. But the glaze didn't stick to the lamb chops at all. The very few pockets of glaze that did stick would have benefited from some char because they were still slightly wet and runny. And drizzling the lamb chops after they were done cooking just resulted in the glaze continuing to slide right off.
So I guess the best thing to do here is to post the recipe as written (noting that we used a different beer instead of the Guinness and used lamb loin chops instead of rib chops), rather than posting the recipe as we made it. The only real difference between the actual recipe and our modification is the cooking method and I would have to give Gourmet the benefit of the doubt and assume that their broiler worked better than our cast iron...
Recipe after the jump!
This dish was something I randomly came up with one night a few weeks ago while trying to decide how to use the shrimp I had defrosted. I started thinking that we hadn't had an entree salad in awhile and then started thinking about what kind of shrimp salad I could make that would be interesting enough to appeal to Alex (who isn't a huge fan of the entree salad genre but goes along with it to humor me). I started kicking around ideas in my head until I came up with the idea of doing a quasi-Indian tandoori shrimp salad - marinating the shrimp tandoori style, crisping up some garlic naan to use as croutons and rounding out the salad with the cucumber, red onion and radishes we already had in the fridge. When I hit the grocery store to pick up some salad greens and the naan I decided that baby spinach sounded like the obvious choice. Then I decided that some grape tomatoes would be another nice addition to the salad. And then I went home and started wildly throwing stuff together.
My favorite elements of the salad were the shrimp (even though we overcooked them they had nice flavor) and the whole garlic naan as crouton idea. Unfortunately, overcooking seemed to be something of a theme because I wandered off and crisped up the naan a little more than I had intended. Oops. I also love salads full of herbs and random veggies. Adding herbs to salads is somewhat new to me (and I only do it occasionally), but ever since I had a salad at The Spotted Pig that included some fresh mint I have been intrigued by the idea of using herbs (in moderation) in salads. Now that I think about it there was an Asian salad I was obsessed with over the summer at Chop't that also included herbs. Unfortunately they rotate their menu of salads and that salad is no longer available, but I have high hopes that it will be back next summer. The dressing was also nice - I liked the interplay between the tang of the Greek yogurt, the hint of sweetness from the honey and the warmth from the spices. I would definitely try the dressing again and play with the spices until I found the perfect combination (I think the combination we found was a good one and worked really well with the salad, but I'm sure that there are a lot of different variations that would be just as good, if not better).
Recipe after the jump!
One of my favorite thingns about visiting my family in Maryland is the opportunity to eat good Vietnamese food. I don't know why Vietnamese food is sub-par in New York City (or if that is even a fair characterization, but Northern Virginia has a huge Vietnamese population and I grew up eating amazing Vietnamese food so I may be a little spoiled), but nothing in NYC can compare to what I can get in Maryland or Virginia. I mean, look at the quail in the picture at the top. And then the assortment of Asian fruits and desserts in the picturese below. You just can't find some of this stuff in NYC since there is only one Vietnamese grocery store and only a few Vietnamese restaurants in the city. This past weekend I went down to Falls Church with my mom and visited a shopping center called Eden Center. For those of you who know the area, Eden Center is essentially little Vietnam. The shopping center is full of Vietnamese restaurants, banh mi shops, bakeries, bars, jewelry stores, etc. And every little strip mall in a 2 mile vicinity has even more resetaurants, bakeries and banh mi shops. When Alex and I got married we had a small wedding banquet of sorts in a Vietnamese restaurant near Eden Center called Present. And we have tried a number of other restaurants, bakeries and banh mi shops in the area. Our favorites are Present, Huong Viet, Viet Royale, Song Que and Ba Le. Of those five, Huong Viet, Viet Royale and Song Que are all in Eden Center. There is a new restaurant in Eden Center called Rice Paper that the Washingtonian recommends that Mom and I will have to test out some time. Maybe during my next visit we will give it a shot... This visit we decided to go to Huong Viet for their quail (pictured above), lotus root salad (pictured below) and butter-fried frog legs (also pictured below - I know it sounds weird, but they are really tasty) versus Viet Royale for their banh xeo (Vietnamese crepes with shrimp and pork) and caramel fish. After lunch we then hit up Song Que for their coconut bubble tea smoothies (they make the absolute best bubble teas) and tons of tasty Vietnamese desserts. Song Que also makes banh mi, but we prefer the banh mi at Ba Le. When I was little I was obsessed with these little rice cakes called banh bo (the banh bo are the little colorful cakes on the far right in the picture of all of the various saran-wrapped green desserts). My grandmother used to hit the Asian markets and come home with little styrofoam containers of roast duck and banh bo for me and I was the happiest little half-Asian girl in the world. For some reason they don't seem to sell banh bo in New York City (although they do sell other somewhat similar Vietnamese desserts at Tan Tin-Hung) so every time I come down to visit my family I try to get my banh bo fix. So I guess I am still a little obsessed.
More (including more pictures) after the jump!
My restaurants that I am dying to try in 2013 (in no particular order, except that restaurants that have been on the list since last year are at the top) are:
- Brooklyn Fare (still dying to go, even more so after seeing the meal that Anthony Bourdain and Eric Ripert had there on the last episode of No Reservations)
- Locanda Verde
- Torrisi Italian Specialities and Parm
- Empellon Cocina
- Pok Pok NY and Pok Pok Phat Thai
- Biang
- Red Farm (they are opening an UWS location in the old Fatty Crab space and I have really high hopes for it)
- The Marrow
- Roberta's and Blanca (also attributing this addition to the last episode of No Reservations and the meal that Anthony Bourdain had there)
- Acme
Runners Up: M. Wells Dinette, Pig and Khao, Sripraphai, Boulud Sud, Yunnan Kitchen, Red Rooster
**SPOILER ALERT - Alex and I hit one of the runners up last night and it was phenomenal. More on that later
More after the jump!
Growing up this fudge was a holiday tradition in my house. There were a few years where my mother made butter cookies around the holidays, but she made this fudge each and every single year. I remember helping Mom wrap each individual piece of fudge in tiny little wrappers she bought specifically for that purpose - sometimes they were holiday themed, sometimes they weren't. I don't think it needs to be said that I probably ate just as many pieces as I successfully wrapped along the way. What I love about this fudge is that it is really easy to make and it isn't too sweet. So many fudge recipes are so sweet that they make my teeth hurt - this one is nowhere near that sweet. It also doesn't do the instant crazy melty thing that a lot of store-bought or homemade fudge does once you put it in your mouth. I guess I like my fudge to be a little sweeter and a little less traditionally fudgy? I don't know. What I do know is that Christmas doesn't quite feel like Christmas without some of this homemade fudge in the kitchen.
Recipe after the jump!
