Entries from The Amateur Gourmet tagged with 'recipes'
Pot Roast
When I think pot roast, I think Americana, I think 50s sitcoms and a beleaguered housewife who intones: "Oh, darn it, I burnt the pot roast!" It's not a dish that I ate much growing up, eating--as we did--most of our meals out. My first real pot roast memory, actually, comes from Atlanta. I ordered pot roast at one of my favorite, kitschy restaurants there--Agnes & Muriel's--and got very sick afterwards. I don't blame Agnes & Muriel's, but I did blame pot roast. I avoided it for years....
Food52
It's no secret that I'm a big fan of Amanda Hesser's. I've been cooking her recipes--from her vanilla bean loaves to her carrot fennel soup--for as long as I've been cooking, really. Which is why I'm so delighted that Amanda and her friend Merrill Stubbs have joined our ranks here on the world wide web. Check out their new site Food52: a fun, interactive recipe resource that allows you to submit recipes, vote for recipes and help shape an actual cookbook that'll be published at the end of a year. I really love the videos of Amanda and Merrill cooking together (like this one of them cooking fish): it's refreshing to discover that the authoritative voice behind the New York Times Magazine food section is just a normal person like you and me. With an incredibly nice kitchen....
Easy Biscuits
It's a good thing to know how to make biscuits. I mean, at what point of the day would you say "no" to a hot buttermilk biscuit, fresh from the oven? The answer is: "No point of the day, Adam. I would eat a biscuit any time." I'm right there with you, imaginary person. I love biscuits and I try to make them whenever I can, especially on Sunday mornings when I send Craig to the store to buy eggs. "Buy some buttermilk too," I often say because, really, if he buys buttermilk, I have everything else I need to make biscuits. To make fresh biscuits all you need is butter, buttermilk, flour, baking soda, baking powder, sugar and salt. Everything else is technique....
Sea Salted Everything Bagels Done Right
This is what I want to eat right now from the best named food blog I've seen in a while. [via Elise's Twitter feed]...
The River Cottage Roast Chicken
My go-to roast chicken recipe, that one from Chez Panisse (here's a video I made on how to make it), is such a gut bomb of fat--and fat from just the chicken itself--that any roast chicken recipe that requires the addition of more fat (butter, olive oil) usually provokes my inner Richard Simmons who bursts out in short shorts and says, "You don't need all that fat you fat fat fatty!"...
Roasted Shrimp & Broccoli
Remember that broccoli post I posted a few months ago? The Best Broccoli of Your Life? It kind of took the world--or, rather, the web--by storm. To prove it, do a Google search for "best broccoli recipe" and marvel at the #1 result. If Google says it's the best broccoli recipe, then it has to be, doesn't it? Just like if you Google "best food blogger," my blog... what? WHAT? Get Google on the phone right now! I think so many people liked that recipe because it resulted in broccoli with a texture and a flavor few of us were familiar with. Crispy, caramelized broccoli? Not that mushy, frozen stuff? Plus all that lemon juice, lemon zest, garlic, and Parmesan cheese; it was kind of hard not to love that broccoli. It's the kind of recipe that'd be difficult to improve upon; that is, until you add shrimp....
Katy's Pizza
Pizza god Adam Kuban of SliceNY and Serious Eats had this to say the last time I made pizza: "AmGour: I love ya and all, man, but you gotta spread that dough out thinner!" A thin crust, it turns out, is the sine qua non of perfect pizza. The great pizzas of New York--Di Fara, Franny's, and Una Pizza Napoletana--all have relatively thin crusts that don't overwhelm the other pizza elements. But, I must confess, when I'm at home making pizza my goal isn't to recreate these laudable thin-crust pizzas; my goal is to recreate my friend Katy's pizza, from the days when she lived close by in Atlanta....
Greatest Hits
It was easy to pick out my biggest disasters--they sort of speak for themselves--but how to narrow down five years of food blogging to just a few favorite recipes? The truth is that I can narrow it down pretty easily because there are two specific recipes that are all-time greats; so great, I make them at least once a month. The first is the picture you see above: Cavatappi with Sun-Dried Tomatoes. I gleaned the recipe from my favorite TV Chef, Lydia Bastianich, and it's just one of those recipes with singular ingredients--sun-dried tomatoes, red chile flakes, garlic, cannellini beans--that, through the process of being cooked together, become a beautiful whole. Added to cavatappi noodles, which look like Slinkies made of eggs and flour, it's a squiggly, scrumptious feast. Topped with cheese, it gets even better....
Baked Red Kidney Beans with Chorizo
Is cheating on a recipe like cheating on a test? I wondered that as I made the "Red Kidney Beans Baked with Chorizo, Chilli, Garlic, and Olive Oil" from Simon Hopkinson's sequel to "Roast Chicken & Other Stories," "Second Helpings of Roast Chicken." Simon, or Mr. Hopkinson (that feels more appropriate), calls for dried kidney beans in his recipe "soaked in cold water overnight." I have a philosophy about recipes that call for dried beans soaked in cold water overnight: I hate them! Who plans a recipe the night before? I mean, ok, there've been times I knew I was having guests the next day where I made a cake ahead or marinated meat ahead, but I've never soaked beans ahead. I just refuse to do it; I use canned beans instead....
I Tried To Invent A Pudding
Ok, the election is over, we can all breathe a heavy sigh of relief, and move on with our lives. What better way to move on than to try to invent a pudding? After making Elise's foolproof recipe for chocolate pudding (click here) several times--it's become something of a staple in our home--I began to think deeply about the process. "Ok," I thought, " to make chocolate pudding you put milk in a pot with sugar, cocoa powder, cornstarch and a pinch of salt. You heat and whisk vigorously until it gets really thick, then you add an egg and some more chocolate and put in ramekins or mugs and refrigerate. That's all you do." My thoughts continued: "So why can't I just put anything I want in milk, add cornstarch and sugar and a pinch of salt, and make whatever kind of pudding I can dream up? Why can't I invent my own pudding?"...
Seared Scallops with Citrus Risotto
Visions of food sometimes arrive and you wave them away like an annoying fly. "Why am I craving lobster bisque right now?" you ask yourself while castrating a horse. "Get that craving out of my head!" But what you don't realize, person who is reading this, is that a craving is a gift, assistance from the great beyond advising you on what precisely you are crying out for in the deepest, most desperate part of your soul. Take the experience I had yesterday. I was leaving work at Food Network (you have to call it Food Network, not "The Food Network" or you get fired) and I walked past the seafood store down there in the Chelsea Market and I had a vision of scallops on a citrus risotto. Was I craving this? Not necessarily. Did I really want scallops for dinner? Maybe, I wasn't sure. But that vision was insistent. "You must make me," the vision kept saying. "Scallops and citrus risotto is what you will eat." Finally, I caved and bought a pound of large, diver scallops which I brought back on the subway (my lucky subway neighbors!) and when I got off the train I hurried home to look up the citrus risotto from the Zuni Cafe Cookbook. I also read about it online and after reading my friend Heidi's post on the recipe (a basic risotto recipe with grapefruit and lime segments added in) I took her conclusion to heart: "god, this would be great with oranges or lemons." I made a citrus risotto with lime segments, grapefruit segements and the segments and juice from a navel orange. I seared the scallops Batali-style in a non-stick skillet. And friends, believe me when I tell you, this dinner was a triumph. I know it's a triumph because Craig's reaction to a pretty good meal is often a head-nod; his reaction to a triumph is: "Oh my God, this is so good. What did you put in this? I love this." Don't thank me, Craig: thank my vision. What follows is how you can realize my vision at home.......
Is this better?
For those of you who told me to resize my pictures, my wonderful design team--Leah & Justin--walked me through the process and now we can compare the results. This is how a picture used to appear on my site: And this is what it looks like when I resize it in iPhoto to have a 425 width before uploading to Flickr: Is the second one better? To me they look exactly the same--but I'm not very image savvy. And in case you're wondering what you're looking at--last week I made a vegetarian chili I found on Epicurious (recipe here) and served it with Dorie Greenspan's magnificent cornbread muffins, a recipe I almost made again today (which you can find here on Serious Eats)....
Cassoulet in 10 Easy Steps
When Anthony Bourdain cooks with Michael Ruhlman on the Cleveland episode of "No Reservations," he layers meat and beans together in a giant drum, tops the whole thing off with breadcrumbs and produces a dish most of us aren't used to seeing on Food TV (and I say that as someone who now works for Food TV): a classic French cassoulet that'd put Julia Child to shame. Cassoulet is a dish that just makes sense. Why does it make sense? You take fatty, flavorful meat, put it in a big pot with moisture-hungry beans and bake the whole thing until the beans are infused with all that fat and flavor and the meat is cooked. It's not meant to be a fancy dish--this is the kind of food French people make at home--and it's infinitely variable, as evidenced by the infinite cassoulet recipes you will find in my infinite cookbook collection, recipes that vary the type of meat, the type of bean, even the amount of time it takes to make the dish (Bourdain's recipe, in his "Les Halles Cookbook," calls for three days). I didn't have three days to spare on Friday night when I set out to make my very first cassoulet. So I turned to an under-praised, underused book in my collection: Daniel Boulud's "Daniel's Dish: Entertaining at Home with a Four-Star Chef". It's a great recipe for its simplicity (it's called "Casual Cassoulet") and yet the recipe has a serious flaw: it's meant to be cooked in a 15-Qt Dutch Oven. I completely missed that part when I shopped for my ingredients, so I prepped enough food for a pot 3X bigger than the one I had. Therefore, the recipe that follows is my adaptation of Daniel's recipe for Dutch Ovens of a more realistic size. Daniel's recipe calls for lamb shoulder, but I left that out too: sausage + duck + bacon = plenty of meat for one dish, thank you very much. Since winter's almost over, this is the perfect dish to make on one of our last cold winter's nights. I promise it's easy and I promise the pay-off is big. And so, without further ado, Cassoulet in 10 Easy Steps....
Homemade Pizza with Caramelized Onions, Rosemary & Gorgonzola
Sometimes the name of a dish sounds so intimidating your immediate reaction is: "Pish posh! I can't make that! And why did I just say pish posh?" Such might be the case with the pizza you see above. You hear "pizza" and that doesn't sound so difficult, but you add "caramelized onions, rosemary and gorgonzola" and you feel like you're on Planet Impossible. Well come back to Earth, Earthling, and let me assure you: that pizza you see above may SOUND difficult, but it's really a cinch. Here, let me convince you....
Killer Salads
I've been making some killer dinner salads lately and I'd like to share with you my technique. I subscribe to the "stuff" philosophy of salad-making which is, essentially, that the best part of a salad is the "stuff," not the lettuce. So my salads have no lettuce: just lots of stuff mixed together in a bowl with a homemade vinaigrette. The salad above, for example, has chopped up carrots, peppers, cherry tomatoes, red onion, bacon, avocado and blue cheese. The salad below, on the other hand, has peppers, carrots, onions, green beans, and chickpeas: So here's how I make a great salad. Buy your ingredients--they don't have to be fancy or even from the farmer's market, I got mine from my crappy Key Foods--bring them home and wash them and dry them well. Then cut your ingredients into big pieces and throw them into a bowl. In a smaller bowl, place an egg yolk (that's my dressing secret), a big spoonful of spicy French mustard and about 2 Tbs of balsamic vinegar with salt and pepper and whisk together. Then, slowly, drizzle in--drop by drop--your favorite olive oil, whisking all the time. If you do it correctly, it'll stay thick and emulsified and you'll ahve a creamy, tangy, colorful dressing for which to dress your salad. Then pour about half the dressing over the vegetables, crumble on some really good blue cheese (the kind that has a name--like Danish Blue, which I used), grind some pepper over the bowl and mix it all together with a big spoon. Taste a bite and see if it needs more dressing, if it needs more cheese. Adjust accordingly and serve with some crusty bread which you've heated in the oven. It may not be the healthiest salad on the block, but its certainly a healthier alternative to that fast food burger you were thinking of scarfing down from immoral cows. Bon appetit....
Orangette's Butternut Squash and Chickpea Salad with Tahini
Going through old pictures, just now, I found the picture you see above and smacked my lips at the memory: "Hey!" my brain sang out. "That's that delicious butternut squash and chickpea salad with tahini you made from Orangette's website." According to the picture, I made this on December 19th. So please follow this link to Orangette's recipe (it's an adapted recipe, so lets not give her ALL the credit) and take a picture, date it, and bury it away so you can have the same experience I just had. Then make it again as I plan to make it again quite soon....
Let Her Eat Cake
What I didn't tell you at the end of the last post is that I had a secret weapon in my arsenal to impress Lauren. She who worships at the altar of chocolate, she who mocks me for my chocolate aversion: she would be the recipient of a two-tiered ganache covered chocolate creation from Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook. Here's how it was done....
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?...
Fried Chicken & Collard Greens
The plan was for my usual roast chicken (which, by the way, you should only salt until it has a light coating: those who said it was too salty took my recipe too literally!) but then, as I was standing there in the grocery store, I spotted collard greens. "My, my," I said to myself in a Southern accent. "It's been a long time since we here attempted fried chicken." (You may remember that was a disaster). "And I done never cooked collard greens before. Why, I see a mighty fine supper in my future." (My apologies to Southerners)....
The Amateur Gourmet's Thanksgiving Game Plan
Attached you will find a PDF file that'll either inspire great terror or great awe. It's a massive document, with all the recipes broken down over the days I'm home to cook. My only fear, right now, is too much sweet stuff: I may need to add mashed potatoes. But, alas, it is 1:06 AM and I must pack for my flight tomorrow. Will I survive this year's Thanksgiving? Will I crumble and fail? Tune in next week as I blog the whole experience.... until then, have a great weekend! [Note: you'll see on the menu I say I'm doing Alton's brined turkey, but at the last minute I switched to a cider brined turkey from Epicurious. Feel free to discuss.] View The Thanksgiving Game Plan PDF...
