Orangette Archives

On Molly Wizenberg’s “A Homemade Life”

“Write what scares you.”

That’s the kind of directive you’ll get in college creative writing classes, interactive online workshops and, believe it or not, grad school. You’ll get it from the old pros and you’ll get it from frustrated young upstarts: “write what scares you.” David Lindsay Abaire is a prolific playwright with many hilarious plays under his belt, “Fuddy Meers” and “Kimberly Akimbo” among them. But it wasn’t until a mentor advised him to write what scared him most that he wrote what many consider his greatest play, “Rabbit Hole.” He was duly rewarded with a Pulitzer Prize.

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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.

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The Kindness of Food Bloggers

What’s worse than traveling during the holidays? The answer: traveling from one snow storm to ANOTHER snow storm during the holidays.

That’s what I attempted to do yesterday in what may have been the worst travel day of my life (though I’m sure you’ve experienced worse.) Let’s not talk about the 12 hours on the plane, the refueling in Salt Lake City, and the waiting for a gate to open once we arrived in Seattle. Instead, let’s focus on my helpless situation once I got off the plane. You see Craig, whose family lives in Bellingham (two hours north of Seattle), was stuck in Las Vegas because his connecting flight was canceled (he’d left the day before). The Bel-Air Airporter bus which goes from the Seattle Airport to Bellingham was all sold out; the idea of taking a car there was ludicrous (the snow was pummeling down from the sky.) My only option was to spend the night in Seattle and, utterly exhausted, I flipped open my phone and though Craig has many friends who would’ve let me stay with them, my eyes fixed immediately upon a food blogger friend who you all know and love: Molly, aka Orangette.

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Molly’s Slow Roasted Tomatoes (Pomodori al Forno)

A journey of a thousand miles may begin with one step, but a recipe of several steps begins with precisely 2,408 miles. Specifically: the distance from New York to Seattle.

It was on the plane from New York to Seattle that I read last month’s Bon Appetit magazine which featured our friend Molly Orangette’s recipe for slow roasted tomatoes. The recipe was adapted from the one at Cafe Lago, a restaurant Molly writes lovingly about in the accompanying article, and a restaurant that’s back-to-back with an apartment where Craig used to live with his friends Ryan and Kristen.

The story might’ve ended there, with me reading about Cafe Lago’s Pomodori al Forno on the plane, except the story–like those slow-cooked tomatoes–gets richer as it goes along.

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Food Bloggers Have The Best Recipes (Luisa’s Potato Focaccia, Molly’s Chocolate Granola)

Newspaper recipes don’t excite me.

With their perfect margins, their definitive type, their antiseptic language, I very rarely open the Wednesday Food Section of The New York Times, read a recipe, and run home to make it. Perhaps it’s a function of old media vs. new media, in that the old media feels creaky and irrelevant whereas the new media–by which I mean food blogs–are fresh and accessible and offer real recipes by real people with real personas that aren’t whitewashed or edited, but vivid and alive.

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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.

A New Year’s Feast

If Molly Orangette invites you over for New Year’s dinner, you don’t say no. You say “yes” as fast as you can and hope she doesn’t change her mind. I had to explain this to Craig who wanted to go but had “plans” with “friends” he’s known “forever” and he “promised” them he’d spend “New Year’s” with them, but I quickly disabused him of his faulty logic: friends are friends, sure, but friends are nothing next to a dinner prepared by Molly. Plus Molly was our friend. And she was cooking us dinner. She and her husband, Brandon. Cooking us dinner. Us. Dinner. What didn’t he get?

Craig saw the light and told his friends he’d see them later that night–a plan that actually never came to fruition. Not because Craig flaked out or because Molly held us hostage; that night Craig came down with a terrible flu that he’s still battling. Did his friends put a curse on him? Perhaps. But this is the story of the last meal he ate in good health. And what a meal it was.

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Happy Trails

Yee-haw: that’s me, Molly and Kristin (Craig’s sister) on horseback at the top of Tiger Mountain. We went horseback riding yesterday (both Molly and Kristin have experience with horses; I don’t–which made trotting very painful) and it’s the best $60 I’ve spent in a long time. I’m heading back to New York tomorrow so until I blog again, this is your favorite internet cowboy wishing all of you a rip-roaring July 4th weekend. (Oh, and happy birthday to my brother!)