Thursday N…afternoon Smackdown: I’m Having Dinner at Babbo, Suckas 03 Jul 08

At a VIP table, no less. Suck on THAT.

Okay, I know this is bad form. It’s my blog, it’s my inaugural event, and here I am, copping out and making a quick lunch so I can skip out on you to spend a night on the town. But here’s the thing: cook eat FRET is in town. And she’s now total BFFs with Joe Bastianich, co-owner of many of Mario Batali’s restaurants, so she managed to get this fancy-ass table at Babbo tonight. And I am not afraid to send a deluge of whiny emails to internet personages to secure reservations like this one. And her mother will be at dinner, so hopefully I’ll get a stock of embarrassing childhood stories I can use as blackmail to get more invitations to dinner like this. And so the circle of life continues. It’s beautiful, really.

I couldn’t not smack something down, though, so I decided to make a light lunch that would be worthy of the occasion but would be light enough so as not to impinge on this evening’s gastronomic adventure. Therefore: Chilled cucumber-yogurt soup with quinoa timbales, courtesy of Lorena Sass’ Whole Grains Every Day, Every Way. It’s a perfect refreshing summer lunch, or first course at a fancy vegetarian restaurant, the kind where vegans go for special occasions. (”Will you accept this cruelty-free Canadian diamond set in hemp as a gesture of my desire to spend my life with you in monogamous co-equal sustainable partnership?”)

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Thursday Night Smackdown: Maybe Fish Sauce Isn’t Entirely Evil 19 Jun 08

I don’t want to harp, really, but I do feel that I must state here again that I do NOT own a mandolin.

I finally got a copy of Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s Asian Flavors of Jean-Georges, and immediately wanted pretty much everything in it. I was going to do the peking duck, because yum, but the directions instructed me to hang the glazed raw duck from a hook overnight in the fridge, where you’ve also placed a small battery-powered fan to keep air moving around the duck. Thanks for adapting that recipe for the home cooks with normal-sized refrigerators* at whom your book is aimed, Jean-Georges! Really helpful.

Still, I can’t be too angry at him because despite his chef stardom he still eats hot dogs. So I decided to go with his Charred Lamb Salad, a riff on traditional Thai beef and lettuce wraps that sounds MUCH more boring that it actually is.

*Maybe I didn’t read the introduction carefully, maybe it’s only for home cooks with home meat lockers.

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The day went downhill from here. 12 May 08

NOTE: THE PICS IN THIS POST ARE NOT WHAT THEY’RE SUPPOSED TO BE AND WILL BE FIXED SHORTLY

Brunch price: $17

Some years I pre-gird my loins in preparation for Mothers’ Day; some days it sneaks up on me. Either way, Mothers’ Day sucks the fat one when you’ve got no mom.* Don’t get me wrong - I utterly adore my mother-in-law** and feel incredibly fortunate to have married into a family that I love as much as my own. But Mothers’ Day still has the power to make me pretty cranky, and in more than 4 of the past 8 years I’ve wanted to tell it to suck my metaphorical dick.***

You know what can make the day better? Getting into a four-car pile-up on the way to your in-laws’ because the assholes around you were too busy talking on the phone and/or rubbernecking at another accident that had happened less than 15 minutes prior.****

*In that she passed away, not that I was asexually created from a single gamete.

**Totally seriously.

***Which is fucking HUGE.

****5 minutes after our accident, while we were waiting on the side of the road for EMTs to show up and check me out, ANOTHER asshole caused ANOTHER three-car pile-up on the SAME stretch of road.

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The 12 Minute Challenge: Penne alla Vodka 06 May 08

Yum-O!…I’m already sorry I said that. LIGHTEN UP, PEOPLE.

This delicious meal of penne alla vodka and spinach salad with caesar-ish dressing, pecorino cheese and proscuitto can be made in 12 minutes.

Can a post describing it be written in 12 minutes? It’s 10:06. Let’s go!

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You can’t beat this meat with a stick: Part Deux 06 Apr 08

Thyme for dinner, everyone! (Ba-da dum!)

Sometimes, life gives you extra Bolognese sauce. When that happens, I’m firmly of the mind that you should make lasagna Bolognese.

You’ll probably be tempted to invite some friends over for dinner when you do this, because one typically does not make a lasagna for two. I’m here to advise you that you might want to reconsider this; consider having your friends over on another night, a night when you’re having something not quite so good and you won’t mind having NO LEFTOVERS AT ALL because your friends LICKED the inside of the baking dish clean.

Just saying.

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weekend breakfast blogging: now 65% more beige! 08 Mar 08

Have you met Lidia, Lidia the tattooed lady?

The leftover sausage and spinach gnocchi filling has been sitting in the fridge since Thursday night, and it hasn’t been waiting patiently. HEY YOU, it’s been yelling. YOU WITH THE COOKIE CRUMBS ON YOUR SHIRT. EAT ME. I assume it will only become more abusive as time goes on, so I had no choice but to use it in some eggs en cocotte this morning. Eggs en cocotte are also called shirred eggs, or, as they are now known around here, “the best fucking eggs in the whole entire world” or “crack in a cup.”

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The Welshly Arms is known for its spiced meats, act 2. 13 Feb 08

Did you sleep through Act I?  Philistine.

Do a little dance.  Make a little love.  Make polenta tonight.

Braised meats just get better with time.  Not excessive amounts of time - I wouldn’t eat a  brisket more than 3 or 4 years old - since that would probably cause, you know, rotting.  But an extra day or few really brings all the flavors together.  So if I’m going to spend a whole afternoon or evening braising*, I try to make sure there’s extra in the pot to make a re-appearance later in the week.

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Super Bowl Snackdown II: Potstickers 05 Feb 08

If Tom Brady had eaten these potstickers, the Patriots might have won the game.

Along with the bagna beans, I wanted something else to bring to anti-Super Bowl day, preferably something easily eaten with one hand while playing Scrabble with the other. Something involving one food stuffed inside another food. Something with pork (it’s been over a week!).

The answer: potstickers.

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Super Bowl Snackdown I: Bagna Beans 04 Feb 08

If you can’t find anything nice to say about anyone, come sit here by me.

Super Bowl Sunday: Some people gather to watch the game and eat nachos and wings, others to watch the Puppy Bowl (good job, MVP Abigail the Parsons’ Terrier!) and Olympia Dukakis movies and eat Bagna Cauda Bean Spread. I leave it to you to guess into which camp I fall.

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Leftovers for…dinner?! 02 Feb 08

Won’t you please, please cheese me?

After Thursday night’s meat-o-rama, I didn’t eat for most of the day. I wasn’t stuffed from the night before, am not dieting and didn’t feel sick; my body just didn’t feel the need to eat for a while after, and with good reason. I decided to trust my gut (my literal gut, not my figurative one) and let it go until it sent me a memo re: when it would like to eat. Around 2pm, my gut decided that a cup of butternut squash soup was the way to go, prompting the rest of my body to have some delivered to the office so I wouldn’t have to schlep anywhere in the freezing rain (God bless New York City). Unfortunately, my gut’s eyes (figuratve) were larger than its stomach (literal), and we weren’t yet ready for that amount of nutrition.

My gut next decided to seek out food at around 9:45pm. Still wanting to stay on the lighter side of things, I made a big green salad with the rest of the lovely red lettuce and apple reduction dressing from Thursday. I wanted something else to go with it, but wanted to stay meatless. The perfect solution: a grilled cheese sandwich.

This couldn’t be just any grilled cheese sandwich, since it had to hold its own against the most exciting salad ever. So I went with some hearty, grainy Alameda sprouted-grain bread, a little farmhouse cheddar, and some Major Grey’s mango chutney to add a little something extra and pick up on the sweetness of the salad dressing.

It was a damn fine sandwich. I’m not going to write out a recipe, because, you know, it’s a grilled cheese sandwich. But you should make it.

Coming soon: a dumpling roundup, snacks for the anti-Super Bowl (a marathon of movies starring Olympia Dukakis, you know you want to come), and World Nutella Day.