The Amateur Gourmet

Birthday Enchiladas

When Craig and I first started dating back in 2006, my friend Patty asked what sign he was and when he said Aquarius she weighed that against the fact that I was an Aquarius and concluded: “It’ll never work. Two Aquariuses? I don’t see it.”

Seventeen years later, we’re still two Aquariuses battling it out. And February is of course our favorite month because we both get to celebrate our birthdays. For my birthday this year, we went to Antico Nuovo and ate pasta and ice cream and had a grand old time. For Craig’s birthday this year, we went out to Kato and ate an extravagant tasting menu of exquisitely plated seafood dishes. But before that, I threw another birthday bone Craig’s way (I’m such an Aquarius) and made him a dinner he’s always wanted me to make: his mother’s enchiladas. Only I dialed them up a little and turned them into birthday enchiladas.

…

Birthday EnchiladasRead More »

Noodles with Mushrooms, Chiles, and Lime

When you cook a recipe with lots of ingredients, you expect a big impact. So it would follow that cooking a recipe with just a few ingredients would be less impactful; that it would be simple in the way mashed potatoes are simple: straightforward, satisfying, but not complex. And then someone sends you a recipe for noodles with mushrooms, chiles, and lime and you think to yourself, “okay that seems pretty basic,” but then you make it and you marvel at the way every ingredient sings. Not just flavor-wise, but texture-wise. From the crunchy, salty, roasted peanuts you add at the end, to the refreshing whole cup of cilantro that gets stirred in too. Suddenly simple isn’t basic, simple is where it’s at.

…

Noodles with Mushrooms, Chiles, and LimeRead More »

Chicken Sauce Piquant

It’s funny the things that inspire us to cook dinner. I was recently scrolling through TikTok (as one does these days) when a video popped up of Emeril Lagasse making a roux. I’ve long been curious about the process of making a true roux; from everything that I’ve read, it’s a long process — you have to stand there, like you’re making risotto, only instead of twenty minutes, it can take up to an hour. But that process of stirring flour into fat and slowly toasting it creates a base for your soup or stew or gumbo or, in this case, chicken sauce piquant, that not only boosts the flavor, but thickens things into a rich and decadent gravy.

…

Chicken Sauce PiquantRead More »

Blow-You-A-Whey Pancakes with Homemade Labneh

Little Miss Muffet can keep her curds: I’m stealing her whey. Especially to make these blow-you-a-whey pancakes with homemade labneh which (spoiler alert!) are easily some of the best pancakes that I’ve ever made and/or eaten in my life.

The secret is the milky white substance that collects in the bowl underneath the sieve when you strain yogurt overnight in the fridge. If you’ve never done this, you’ve never made labneh, which is a real shame because labneh is like yogurt taken to the power of eleven. It’s thick and creamy and works as a dip, a spread, even on its own as a base for fruit and granola. But we’re not here to talk about the labneh, we’re here to talk about the whey!

…

Blow-You-A-Whey Pancakes with Homemade LabnehRead More »

Baked Chicken Thighs with Butter and Onions

Keep your ferments, your sous vide pork chops, your deconstructed French Onion Soup; when it comes to dishes that I’m interested in, I’d much rather eat the favorite thing that you ate in childhood — especially if it’s something that your mother made for you with love. That’s the case with Aaron Hutcherson’s baked chicken thighs with butter and onions. It’s a deceptively simple dish that his mother made with a homemade spice mix, bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs, and just enough butter to give everything some pizazz. It’s a weeknight dinner that feels good enough for the weekend.

…

Baked Chicken Thighs with Butter and OnionsRead More »

Keema Pau

Have you ever been in a cooking rut? Sometimes I literally have no idea what to make for dinner even though I have a cookbook shelf overflowing with books and I read about food on the internet for 85% of my day.

Thankfully, I started this new podcast and my guests send me recipes to make that I would never think of making on my own. Case in point: this Keema Pau which was suggested to me by my guest this week, Karan Soni, who you may know from the Deadpool movies or the show Miracle Workers. Karan and his partner Roshan came over for dinner and noticed the Dishoom cookbook on my shelf and Karan lit up: he cooked his way through it during the pandemic and absolutely loved the food that he made. So when I asked him to send me a recipe for the pod, he referred me to page 109, which has the recipe for Keema Pau.

…

Keema PauRead More »

Rosemary Dijon Rack of Lamb with Crispy Potatoes

Would you believe that I’ve cooked lamb necks, lamb shoulders, lamb legs, but never that most famous lamb preparation of all… a classic rack of lamb?

The reason’s actually pretty simple: rack of lamb is expensive. And as confident as I am as a meat cook, I’m always scared that if I splurge on something as decadent as a rack of lamb, I’m going to screw it up. And meat is hard to fix once you overcook it. Thankfully, I didn’t have to worry with this particular rack because it was a gift! Well, I received a gift certificate for $100 for an online butcher and I chose one 1 1/2 pound rack of lamb that, with shipping, worked out to the full $100. (I know, that’s insane, but now you know why I’ve avoided cooking lamb racks for so long.)

…

Rosemary Dijon Rack of Lamb with Crispy PotatoesRead More »

Claire Saffitz’s Meyer Lemon Bundt Cake

Bundt cakes often look better than they taste. That’s because, at the end of the day, you’re dumping a bunch of cake batter into a big heavy mold that needs to cook for a while to have stability, but also (very often) dries the cake out in the process. So how do you make a big, impressive-looking bundt cake that actually tastes good? You soak it as soon as it comes out of the oven. I’ve seen recipes for lemon cakes where you cook sugar with lemon juice just until the sugar dissolves to make a lemon syrup and then pour that over the cake (see: The Barefoot Contessa); but I’ve never seen one where you mix raw lemon juice with sugar and olive oil and pour that over the cake. That was until I encountered Claire Saffitz’s Meyer Lemon Bundt Cake in her new cookbook What’s for Dessert?.

…

Claire Saffitz’s Meyer Lemon Bundt CakeRead More »