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Apr 14

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Weekend Links, April 14

Porch_beers

First porch happy hour of the year!

Yesterday I posted one good thing to do with homemade ricotta – here’s another! I’m not sure why they specify store-bought ricotta, because the homemade stuff would work beautifully. And I love the comment at the bottom about using coconut milk or greek yogurt instead of cream … I’ll have to try that soon.

Oh, and here’s yet another idea. Simple, but perfect for spring.

London chefs divulge their guilty pleasure foods. (One of mine? Potato chip, peanut butter, and jelly sandwich on the softest white bread possible.)

Bartenders share their hangover prevention tips. (Mine? Water water water water water ibuprofen water.)

I’m really excited about David Lebovitz‘s new book, particularly because of this buckwheat madeleine recipe.

As many of you may know, I cannot pass up a good link about food and hip-hop. Funkmaster Flex’s hilarious instagram feed. I think “Nice! Who likes salads???” is my favorite.

Helpful, helpful. How to read a French wine label.

I love eggs in cocktails! Well, I love eggs almost anywhere, but in cocktails they are so interesting! The last one we made was basically a negroni shaken with an egg, and it was fantastic.

Six-Onion Pizza with white onions, leeks, shallots, red onions, scallions, and chives! I’m in.

If you hate looking at pictures of adorable newborn lambs, don’t click here. A lovely day-in-the-life series of photos from a farm in Nova Scotia.

And if you’re going to click on just one of these links this week, make it this one, a fascinating article that touches on the science of taste and flavor, how food corporations develop their products, and why there’s really only one ketchup, as far as most of America is concerned.

This week’s meal plan – we’re trying to keep things fairly easy and simple as the semester comes to a close over the next month, so our plans will be a little less involved than normal:

  • Last night – the maple-glazed pork belly we didn’t get to two weeks ago, with wild rice and roasted broccoli
  • Packaged Indian food (the lentil and eggplant options from Trader Joe’s are quite delicious) with packaged frozen parathas (we’re obsessed lately) and homemade raita
  • Mac and cheese with peas and tuna (a classic comfort food for both of us)
  • Lunches: ham sandwiches with homemade whole wheat sandwich bread, kale salads with white beans and coconut (recipe to come, or at least that’s the plan!)
  • Breakfasts: bran raisin muffins and banana bread with yogurt
  • Dessert: lemon curd tart (testing for an upcoming class)

Apr 13

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Homemade pasta handkerchiefs with garlic broccolini and ricotta

Pasta_broccolini_2

In Spring 2007, Brett and I made fresh pasta for the first time. It was my first year of graduate school, and I lived in a dangerous and isolating part of Los Angeles that meant it wasn’t a good idea to leave my apartment after dark. (And I never did!) Brett was still in Claremont finishing his last year of college, and a complicated combination of our class schedules and the location of our internships meant that each of us separately drove or took transit back and forth between Claremont and Los Angeles every single day, a commute that could take anywhere from 45 minutes to 2.5 hours each way. It was a particularly stressful spring, as we criss-crossed eastern Los Angeles County, as our coursework swelled, and as we both tried to find jobs and decide where we’d get our first apartment together. The weight of the semester began to creep into every moment, and as an escape we began taking on cooking projects. We baked bread for the first time; we made croissants; we made fresh pasta. We took entire evenings off and drank cheap bottles of wine and made recipes we were sorely underprepared to make, lacking the tools, experience, or space required.

The first time we made fresh pasta, we rolled out the dough with a long bottle of cheap riesling, which stood in for the rolling pin we didn’t have (which itself would have been standing in for the pasta machine we didn’t have). We kneaded the dough by hand for what felt like hours and rolled out sheet after sheet on the two square feet of counter space in my kitchen, and by the time the meal was ready to eat, many hours after we thought we’d be eating, we flopped into our chairs utterly exhausted. I have a picture of the meal, and among the time-telling ephemera on the table (flip phone!) I can see immediately how much work it must have taken to make that bowl of pasta. I remember the next time we made it, and based on the apartment and who was there I know it was at least two years later. We again rolled out the dough with that same bottle of whine (which served as our rolling pin for quite a few years), overcompensating and rolling out the pasta far too thin, and when we again flopped into our chairs many hours too late, I remember thinking I’d probably never make pasta again.

But I did, again and again, and these days we have it down. I wish I could go back and tell my 22-year-old self that it didn’t have to be so difficult, and I’m more than happy to transmit that message to all of you right now. Fresh pasta! It doesn’t have to be so difficult. A food processor and a pasta machine make it fairly quick and easy work, and the finished product is absolutely worth the effort. Fresh pasta is rich and buoyant, a completely different experience than the dried grocery store variety – even the high-end brands – and the satisfaction that comes with having made something with your hands can fill in any of the meal’s empty spaces.

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Apr 7

Weekend Links, April 7

Scones

Currant cream scones, before forming

For the first time since starting these Weekend Links posts, I find myself faced with just one link to share. Not much happening on the internet this week? More likely that I’m being a bit misanthropic. I promise that next week I’ll have better things to share.

But this one could potentially keep you occupied for a while – one writer’s collection of the best food documentaries.  Some are a bit dated at this point, but still worth watching. I have some catching up to do!

This week’s meal plan:

  • Dinner party – chicken and spare rib paella, honeyed chorizo with pear and bleu cheese/Iberico cheese, spinach/cheese buñuelos
  • Clam chowder with bacon
  • Pupusas we brought back from LA, plus curtido and El Pato salsa
  • Braised pork shank with rice and cabbage
  • Banh xeo (Vietnamese rice crepes) with ground pork, mung beans, bean sprouts, and nuoc cham
  • Four and Twenty Blackbirds’ black bottom oatmeal pie, via The New Midwestern Table
  • Lunches: Ham, homemade ricotta, and roasted red pepper sandwiches on Madison Sourdough poppy millet bread, leftovers
  • Breakfasts: French toast, overnight oats

 

Apr 2

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A new paloma

If you, too, are lucky enough to live in a place where the weather patterns are beginning to shift in a way that changes everyone around you, you should put this on your list. You should make it in the evening and drink it outside when it’s first just barely warm enough to do so, preferably on one of these evenings that reminds you how wonderful it is when there’s still sunlight after dinner. It won’t matter at all that, out of practice and extraordinarily optimistic, you’ll end up a bit underdressed for the temperature. Or that you haven’t put the cushions on the porch chairs quite yet. Won’t matter one bit. 

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Mar 31

Weekend Links, March 31

Blossoms

Blossoms, Pomona Organic Farm

Sorry for the relative radio silence these past two weeks. A wonderful week in SoCal full of sun and friends and incredible meals lead to a very hectic week after, and we’re still playing a bit of catch-up. But I’m scrambling to get back in the game. Here are some links to get your week off to a good start:

Butter is not the problem.

Why do we equate vanilla with plain?

Gin, Aperol, cucumber – I’m in.

What’s up with the weird-fitting label on Angostura bitters? This and more in a behind-the-scenes factory tour. (Also – has anyone out there tried their rum?)

A super-handy Whiskey Glossary (for all those times you need to know the difference between Canadian and Irish whiskeys on a moment’s notice).

The search for a good coffee grinder. (Just don’t ask me what we use because I’m too embarrassed to tell you.)

Edible maps of the world.

Inside Rick Bayless’ Mexican Culinary Research Library.

This week’s meal plan:

  • Chinese dumplings with pork and Napa cabbage (using leftover filling from a few weeks back)
  • Coconut dal and curried pea fritatta
  • Oven-roasted pork chops, braised red cabbage, spätzle
  • Maple-laquered pork belly, wild rice, and salad
  • Lunches: kale salad with wild rice, scallions, cilantro, edamame, carrots, and sesame seeds, with a rice vinegar-sesame oil vinaigrette
  • Breakfasts: overnight oats, bran muffins and yogurt
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