me and julie in boston

Oldies but goodies from a trip to Boston several months back. Good weather and lots of tasty treats! Again, bonding over foodventures. We've got a lobster roll from James Hook & Co., fancy shmancey dinner at the Eastern Standard in celebration of my promotion at work (was that the occasion? I can't remember anymore), cupcakes from Georgetown Cupcakes!

 

new york city restaurant week - perilla

Restaurant Week ran in New York City from July 22 through August 16. There were a bunch of places I really wanted to try out, but sadly most of the ones on my list were only running specials for lunch Monday through Friday. Alas. The woes of working deep in the bowels of Brooklyn.

However, I did have the opportunity to dine at Perilla in the West Village with my high school friend Isabel and her college friend Susan. They had a really delicious prix fixe menu, featuring a selection of appetizers, mains, and desserts.

I think we each ended up ordering the exact same thing: mussels to start, followed by a roast chicken with either a peach or apricot glaze, a small loaf bread for dessert with some sort of consommé on the side.  (Can you tell it's been a while since I ate here?) We also shared some sort of duck meatball side dish with cipollini onions and mozzarella and some other flavors. And to round everything off, the waiter brought us little chocolate cookies topped with sea salt sprinkled on top.

Seriously yummy meal. I don't consider myself a New Yorker by any stretch of the imagination, but once in a while I catch myself in these "New York" moments, and this dinner felt like one of them.

the burger bistro

 

When Julie was here – weeks and weeks ago now... this is a very late post – we had dinner at the Burger Bistro in Bay Ridge (also located in Park Slope and the Upper East Side). I freaking love this place and wish I still lived as close to it as I used to. Make-your-own burger menus, fries, tater tots (we love our totz), and ICE CREAM SANDWICHES. Not to mention local sodas that come in fancy bottles and in flavors like "ginger root" and whatnot. Ahhh.

ways to eat quinoa

 

Try this out in your quinoa: Golden raisins (soaked in water to plump them up a bit) & salt and pepper cashews mixed in.

(These are a few pictures from dinner some time ago... baked salmon, sweet potato wedges, quinoa, little dinner rolls, and perfectly cooked French beans.*)

*By "perfectly cooked," I mean simultaneously tender and crispy. Yum!

piccolini with zucchini... and squash

Finally, a post! I've been taking lots and lots and lots of food pictures... Just been lazy about uploading them all. Wah. Anyway, since I am at home for another few weeks before I move to New York, I have tons of time to share my foodie treats with you. :)

In our refrigerator, we had 1 baby squash, 2 baby zucchini, 1 large bag of carrots, 1 stalk of celery, roughly 1 cup of chickpeas, and a bit of leftover quinoa (among some other things). I decided to make a veggie lentil stew and some sort of pasta for dinner tonight, with my dad serving (sort of) as sous chef. The stew isn't that exciting since I've kind of blogged about it before, but the pasta was somewhat of an experiment.

 

When it comes to pasta, I'm not really a big fan of adding tomato sauce or alfredo sauce or whatever you typically see in Americanized Italian restaurants. Just give me some olive oil, some good shredded cheese, salt, pepper, and a splash of lemon, and I'm good to go. Unfortunately, we don't have lemon or any sort of passable shredded cheese, so I had to go the more minimal route, loosely based off of one of Jamie Oliver's recipes (he is the king of flavor combinations, in my opinion).

I sliced up a zucchini and a squash using a veggie peeler to get these lovely, paper-thin slices (FYI, a veggie peeler works, but a speed peeler might be more efficient). I minced 2 cloves of garlic and fried them in olive oil (be generous! - this will help dress the pasta) on medium-high heat for about 30 seconds, then added the squash and zucchini, tossed that around for a few minutes, and seasoned with salt and pepper. I tossed the zucchini-squash mixture with piccolini (made with carrot and butternut squash puree, apparently, courtesy of Barilla), and voila.

The pasta had a really nice clean taste. It's an insanely quick and easy summer pasta dish and would be great with some parmigiano reggiano, I think. Next time!

 
See? Truly, paper-thin!

dramatic dinner

Please enjoy this unusually dramatic photo of my dinner from a few nights ago. Sauteed baby spinach and baby bella mushrooms (ever since taking PLPA 2010, I have a whole new appreciation for our fungal friends) and an English muffin!

red yellow green

Very belated post featuring some of my favorite food colors lately.

 
 

1. Chickpeas, tofu, spinach, and tomatoes on quinoa.

2. My favorite Mediterranean mix.

3. Boring pasta with mozzarella, tomatoes, and spinach.

4. Kale! And some other stuff.

Sorry for the long wait in between posts! I've been very lazy with the cooking these days...

happy valentine's day

Quinoa, cooked love apples, and tofu marinated* and sauteed in soy sauce, sesame oil, and clover honey**.

Truth: I am my own best valentine. Saucy.

*Usually I'm pretty terrible at coming up with the right ratios for ingredients in marinades, but this one turned out quite nicely! Unfortunately I don't have specific measurements for you so my general advice is to make incremental changes and be sure to taste along the way. Add more soy sauce than sesame oil and enough honey so that you don't feel like you're going to bloat up and die from a sodium overdose. Good luck!

**Speaking of honey, check out the most perfect card for this blog: C'mon, honey. Bee my valentine.

Cards available for purchase from Magnolia Press for Tiny Prints and Etsy.

walnut-crusted tilapia

This was the feast my mom and I conjointly prepared several nights ago. It was kind of fancy. We had wilted spinach sauteed in olive oil and garlic; walnut-crusted tilapia brushed with a mixture of light mayonnaise, Grey Poupon, and fresh chopped basil; baked Japanese yams; roasted kabocha squash; and finally a small helping of quinoa.

For those who are not in the know, Grey Poupon is one of those famous flagship Dijon mustard brands, like French's for yellow mustard, except Grey Poupon has much nicer packaging. It's made with brown mustard seed and white wine, which (fun fact from Wikipedia) "is produced in upstate New York under the supervision of a rabbi, to ensure that the product maintains its kosher status." So there you have it. Grey Poupon is at least partly if not wholly (wholly, holy, ha!) rabbi-certified kosher.

My dad discovered Grey Poupon when I was in the sixth grade. Incidentally, I decided to take French as an elective that year, and from that class I can only recall two things.

The first is that le mur (pronounced something like "leh me-uh") is French for "the wall."

The second is that behind every enjoyable foreign language class, there is always a teacher campaigning for a cultural food event.

For our end-of-year soiree, my mom helped me make pain au chocolat, which according to the recipe is basically a bunch of glorified croissants with Nutella inside. Another student brought in a dish made with Grey Poupon, presumably because Dijon mustard originated in France (in Dijon, France, to be precise). In response to this weird foreign dish, one of my classmates asked, "What is it? Gray poopoo?!" And so, ever since, I've mentally referred to Grey Poupon as Grey Poopoo.

Classy. And kosher!

Walnut-Crusted Tilapia
Adapted from Epicurious

2 tbsp light mayonnaise
2 tbsp Grey Poupon
a small handful of fresh basil leaves, chopped
a pinch of salt and pepper
2 cups walnuts
4 filets of tilapia

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

In a small bowl, combine mayonnaise, Grey Poupon, basil, salt, and pepper. Stir well.

Optional: Toast walnuts on a pan over medium-high heat for a few minutes or until they smell fragrant. Coarsely chop walnuts or, alternatively, fill a Ziploc bag with walnuts and pound away using a heavy rolling pin. Spread walnuts onto a shallow dish.

Pat dry filets and coat each side with mayonnaise-mustard mixture. Press into crushed walnuts, coating each side.

Place onto a baking sheet and bake for 15 minutes or until flaky.

hearty healthy dinner

   

In the above photos, you shall see: pan-seared salmon with a crisp, browned crust and perfectly tender on the inside; quinoa (this one caused me quite some trouble; nota bene: don't Pinterest and cook); acorn squash, roasted until slightly dehydrated and with a hint of sweetness; and my chickpea stew, always a good standby.

Really a hearty and healthy meal, and one that is perfect for the 2012 dieters that don't read this blog. Don't look at me, I'll have another cookie, please...

page 213

 

Hello, haven't written here in some time. Hope you all had a nice Christmas. As for me I've been at home for the past few weeks on winter holiday. I haven't been cooking quite so much, but my family has been baking a lot - scones, quick bread, biscotti... I'll post pictures of the spoils sometime this week.

My dad gave me Jamie Oliver's Meals in Minutes book for Christmas, and it's filled with all sorts of delicious treats. I did a variation on page 213 for dinner tonight - super fast beef hash, lovely butter beans and bacon, and Jamie's goddess salad with a dressing made with sour cream, avocado, and lemon.

 

The butter bean dish was my favorite - very creamy and hearty and lots of yummy cooked tomatoes. Really good with crusty bread, an alternative beans on toast, if you will. This is the kind of food I imagine hobbits to eat ("oh that's nice... ash on my toe-mah-toes!").

The dressing for the salad (see below) was tangy and creamy and fruity and kind of nutty all at once. It was a delicious mix of avocado, sour cream, the juice of a lemon, olive oil, salt, and pepper.

Yum yum yum. A feast!

 

the 4 c's

Smashed sweet potatoes and chickpeas with the 4 C's (curry, coriander, cumin, and cinnamon) on sourdough.

Going home tomorrow!

sweet potato hash

   

Belated post about my fancy shmancy breakfast for dinner last week. It's a sweet potato hash with bacon and onions (I've been eating more bacon this semester than I have in possibly my entire life combined...), couscous fritters, and a fried egg. I started out thinking this was going to be a legitimate, healthy dinner, but as you can see, I gave up on that pretty quickly...

The sweet potato hash was d-e-l-i-s-h. I peeled and chopped up a sweet potato* and tossed it in olive oil, salt, and pepper. Popped it in a roughly 375 degree oven for about 25-30 minutes. Meanwhile I prepped and cooked the bacon and onion on the stove and added in the sweet potatoes when they were ready. Yummo.

I can't wait for Thanksgiving when I can enter into sweet potato coma.

*Actually, according to the sign at Wegmans, these are yams. I don't fully know what the difference is, but I do know that "sweet potato" sounds a lot nicer than "yam" so I will continue to call these tubers by the incorrect name.

chickpea stew

Every so often I have days where there's nothing I want more than a big bowl of hearty veggie stew and some nice crusty bread. My sister and I "developed" this recipe last winter. It's incredibly easy to adapt, which is one reason why I really like it. You can substitute ingredients, add more, take some out. Not a fussy dish at all and so delicious and satisfying.

Chickpea Stew

1 can chickpeas or lentils
2-3 medium potatoes - you can use pretty much anything, including sweet potatoes, except maybe baby or fingerlings which are more waxy and less creamy when cooked
Stewed or flash-steamed tomatoes (canned is okay)
Winter vegetables (squash, zucchini, carrots...)
1 large onion (yellow or red will work)
Several garlic cloves
Chicken broth
Parsley or cilantro
Cumin, paprika, fennel seeds (optional), cinnamon stick (optional)
Salt, pepper

Wash and chop all veggies into similar sized chunks. Slice garlic thinly.
Drain and rinse chickpeas.
Heat a pot over medium-high, add olive oil.
Add onions and garlic. Cook for 2-3 minutes.
Add potatoes. Cook for another 5-7 minutes.
Add spices. Cook until they become fragrant.
Add tinned tomahtoes, stir for a minute, then add winter veg and chickpeas.
Add chicken broth; or if you don't have broth, you can use water.
Simmer until potatoes are done, and then you can mash up everything with a fork.
Sprinkle with chopped parsley and a drizzle of olive oil, plain yogurt, sour cream, Parmesan cheese...
Serve with bread, rice, pasta, couscous, etc.

sweet potato lentil stew

As Ithaca winter approaches and the sky starts getting dark at 5pm, I find that all I really want to do is sleep and eat stew and compliment people on the fit of their pants and listen to songs like Poison & Wine by The Civil Wars on repeat. In fact, that is exactly what I've been doing today. (The perfect black pants were from Paris. Of course.)

I made this sweet potato lentil stew for dinner tonight, loosely basing it off my favorite chickpea stew recipe, which I will post here at some point in the next few days.

I'm too lazy to do a proper recipe right now - plus I don't have real measurements of anything - but I'll give a fairly accurate run through of what I did, for anyone who is interested.

Things you'll need: Garlic, onion, olive oil, a sweet potato, your favorite spices, lentils.

Peel and roughly chop a couple cloves of garlic. Chop up a small onion. Heat a pot on medium heat, add olive oil, and cook the garlic and onion together until the onion turns translucent and the smell of your kitchen makes you think your cooking skills are legit.

Peel and chop your sweet potato into bite size chunks. Add to the pot and top off with a little more olive oil. Cook for a couple minutes, stirring every so often. Add lentils (I used a can of white cannellini beans and some leftover red kidney beans) and spices (cumin, coriander, nutmeg... curry would be another nice option). Add about a cup and a half of water and cook until sweet potatoes soften.

Mash everything up to desired consistency. Serve with pumpkin seeds, feta, and a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil.

healthy pasta

 

Shell pasta with a chunky tomato-based sauce and the rest of my broccoli rabe, which was flash boiled and then sauteed. I sort of made up the tomato sauce on the spot - 1 heirloom tomato chopped and smashed a bit, 1/4 onion roughly chopped, 1 large clove of garlic roughly chopped, about 1/2 cup of water, about 1/4 cup of red kidney beans, a bit of olive oil, salt, pepper, and I think some kind of Italian seasoning which the Internet tells me includes: MARJORAM, THYME, ROSEMARY, SAVORY, SAGE, OREGANO, AND BASIL. A sprinkle of feta and a handful of raw almonds to top it all off.

odds and ends

 
 

1. Kale sauteed with bacon and chickpeas. 2. Fiori pasta with broccoli rabe cooked in garlic and sun-dried tomatoes. 3. Broccoli rabe, thinly sliced yams, mozzarella cheese on a spinach wrap (total structural failure...). 4. Lovely November heirloom tomatoes.

lentil veggie stew

 

Lentil veggie stew with dandelion greens, served with couscous and some mozzarella cheese. This was seasoned with all of my favorite spices (cumin, coriander, turmeric, nutmeg... note to self: next time add a cinnamon stick!) and aside from the bitter dandelion greens - which I will not be bringing home again anytime soon - it was soso tasty.