Entries from The Amateur Gourmet tagged with 'Suzanne Goin'
Colorful Coleslaw
Admit it: we all watch "The Real Housewives of New Jersey." So we all saw it when Dina's daughter derided the coleslaw set out for her going-away party to Cyprus. "Who ordered all this coleslaw?" she groused and we all laughed because that gloppy, mayonnaisey mound of coleslaw did look pretty nasty. But take heart, New Jersey housewives: I give you a recipe for coleslaw so simple and so satisfying, I can type the whole thing in this paragraph. It comes from Suzanne Goin's "Sunday Suppers at Lucques" and takes no time at all. Here, have your personal chef do the following: slice half a green cabbage really thinly and half a red cabbage really thinly. Toss together with one grated carrot and half a red onion sliced thinly. Now take half a cup of red wine vinegar, put it in a little pot, and boil until reduced by half ("Oy that smell!") Add 2 Tbs honey to the hot vinegar and then pour over the cabbage, carrot and onion, along with salt and pepper. Toss and let sit 15 minutes. Then add 1/2 cup mayo, chopped chives and chopped parsley, toss all together and you're done. Colorful, killer coleslaw! Enough to make your husbands go, "Fuhgetaboutit."...
The Churros That Saved The Dinner Party
Have you ever had a son or daughter who plays the piano like a real champ, such a champ that you invite all your friends over one night and set up a little concert--with fliers and cocktails and a video camera on a tripod--and when your son or daughter finally sits down to play they totally freeze up and won't hit one note? That's how I felt two weeks ago when I had friends over to eat not one but TWO dishes from a new favorite cookbook, David Tanis's "A Platter of Figs." My love for this book ran pretty deep for a variety of reasons: (a) it was a gift from Craig's parents; (b) David Tanis is the chef at Chez Panisse, one of my favorite restaurants; and (c) the book is knock-you-out beautiful, with gorgeous pictures and recipes and writing that's heartfelt and really, really smart. But when it came time to perform, I'm so sad to report that the two recipes I made from it--the Green Chile Stew & the Spicy Pickled Vegetables--were total duds....
Diana's Birthday Lamb
Cooking a big meal for a friend's birthday is something that I enjoy, especially when that friend is Diana. But, inevitably, the party will end, the dishes will be stacked in the sink and, most devastating for a food blogger like me, there will 1,000 pictures of the meal in my camera and I'll feel an overwhelming duty to blog. Especially when I spent the time to make Suzanne Goin's chorizo-stuffed lamb from "Sunday Suppers at Lucques," a recipe that Goin herself deems the most difficult in the book; I know my readers will want to hear about it. But the pictures have been on Flickr now for weeks and just the idea of taking you through this whole dinner, step by step, fills me with dread. Do you really want to know how it all went down, to the last detail? Aren't you happy just to look at that pretty picture of Diana with those pretty flowers? Can we leave it at that? No? FINE, I'll blog all about it. But first: Diana has a play debuting this week at Brown University called "Girls on the Clock"! For ticket info, click here. To see Diana's birthday lamb, click ahead!...
Potato Puree
Please ignore the short rib in the above photo and focus on the cloud of white beneath it. That, my friends, is what we in the cooking industry (or the food blogging industry) call a potato puree. It's a blend of riced potato innards (Yukon Gold & russets), two sticks of butter, heated cream and milk. We owe this recipe to Suzanne Goin and her "Sunday Suppers at Lucques" which caused us some consternation two weeks ago when it almost killed us with melted plastic. But my friend Jimmy was coming over for dinner last Sunday and I wanted to impress: so I turned to page 301 for Suzanne's "Braised Beef Short Ribs with Potato Puree." The rib recipe was fairly typical: brown in oil, aromatize with onion, carrot and celery, and deglaze with red wine and stock (plus, here, port and balsamic vinegar). The end result was scrumptious and comforting in this cold weather, but my heart belonged to the potato puree....
Plastic Pork Shoulder
Dear Suzanne Goin, I love you and your book Sunday Suppers at Lucques. It's the book I go to when I want to dazzle, when I want to blow my guests out of the water. On Friday, my guest would be none other than Lauren, a great friend and former roommate who was there at the dawn of my website: she knew me when "uh oh" was a more common cooking exclamation than "a-ha." This would be the first time I'd cook for her in three years, years in which my cooking has improved immeasurably. I wanted to knock her socks off and so I turned to your book. The recipe I went for was the "Spiced Pork Stew with Polenta, Root Vegetables, and Gremolata." I decided to nix the root vegetables and gremolata and focus on the pork: Lauren is a big fan of chili and I wanted this to be a kind-of highbrow chili experience. Well not highbrow, necessarily, just impressive. And I know it's not really that chili-like, but slow-cooked pork shoulder with coriander seeds, cumin seeds and fennel seeds should please any chili-lover, shouldn't it?...
