By Betsy Karetnick
Mine is not as pretty as the recipe in the October Bon Appetit (I have so little patience for browning!). BUT, it is super tasty and a great alternative to any of your other chicken standbys. Read the recipe carefully. (Click here to read it) It takes as much time as predicted which is more than you might think. Best for days when you are not behind the dinner 8 ball 🙂
Don't forget the rice. It's the perfect sauce sponge.
Eat – B
I say this with love…even my husband can make this tomato sauce. He was the first to call me and discuss the obit of our grand dame of Italian cooking, Marcella Hazan. That's where I saw the recipe, ringing bells about butter and tomatoes that had faded from memory. (Click here for the recipe)
My advice – add this weapon to your arsenal of kitchen favorites. The handful of ingredients are readily available from pantry and fridge – a savior for last minute family dinners or entertaining.
And let's not pretend that you are butter averse…I saw you eating over-priced pastries at the farmer's market. 😉
Btw – I didn't have enough canned tomatoes, adding chunks of late summer faves doesn't hurt a bit.
Mangia – B
So EZ it's worth repeating! And eating. I snapped the caramel sauce recipe from this month's edition of BA. The apple cake is still on my to-do list. As delicious as the sauce is when warm, it keeps pretty nicely in the fridge. A bit stiffer, but heck, it was the best ice cream topper we had in a while.
If you can't read ingredient amounts from the pic, it calls for 1/2 cup sugar and 1/2 cup cream. Don't walk away from the sugar as it's doing its caramel thing – learned that lesson (again) when I decided to make another batch. 😉
Eat – B
Btw – I think this counts for meat free Monday
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It's not a guarantee, but it's similar to high school yearbook status in my house. As in, "Vegetables most likely to be eaten..." If they're roasted and flavor dense or presented in a form residents are predisposed to like (i.e. puréed cauliflower and potato), I have a higher degree of success.
Thus the spiced and super roasted cauliflower is "most likely" or to be accurate, "more likely" to be eaten. I borrowed the high heat roasting technique from veggie guru Molly Katzen when she was in a phase.
Ingredients this time:
Cauliflower florets from one head2 tablespoons of olive oil1 teaspoon kosher salt1 teaspoon ground cumin1/2 teaspoon garlic powder1/2 teaspoon coriander1/4 teaspoon turmeric2 pinches cayenne
Preheat oven 425. Line baking sheet with baking paper unless you want a bigger cleanup. Combine spices-taste and adjust. Toss cauliflower with oil, then spices. Roast till golden brown or beyond - at least 15-20 minutes. We like it "burnt".
Eat - B
Note: spice combination is completely arbitrary according to personal taste.
We call this the devil made me do it cake as I've been known to double down around Halloween. As Gina De Palma describes in her book “Dolce Italiano” it's an easy, make it in an afternoon cake. Try to get the eggs, butter & milk to the same temp. (I lifted the ingredients & instructions from a Serious Eats post, but the book is well worth the purchase!)
This time I also subbed corn meal for the polenta I was missing and a 1/4 teaspoon allspice for the ginger (am I really missing ground ginger from the spice cabinet?!) -worked out anyway and the cake is delicious in its original. For Ohio fans or those in a shipping area, Jeni's Splendid Brown Butter Almond brittle can't be beat as a topper.
1 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1/2 cup instant or fine polenta
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 large Granny Smith or Golden Delicious apple
8 tablespoons (1 stick/4 ounces) unsalted butter, softened
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup honey
2 large eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1/4 cup whole milk
1
Preheat the oven to 350°F and position a rack in the center. Grease a 9-by-2-inch round cake pan with butter or nonstick cooking spray, dust it with flour, and tap to knock out the excess.
2
In a medium bowl, whisk the flour, poleta, baking powder, salt, and spices together and set aside. Peel the apple and grate it, using the medium side of a box grater. Place the grated apple in a bowl, cover it with plastic wrap, and set aside.
3
In an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream the butter, olive oil, and sugar together on medium speed until and fluffy, about 1 minute. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and beat in the honey until the mixture is smooth and creamy, about 1 minute. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, scraping down the sides of the bowl, followed by the vanilla extract.
4
On low speed, beat in half the dry ingredients, followed by all the milk. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and beat in the remaining dry ingredients. Switch the mixer to medium speed and beat for 30 seconds to emulsify the batter. Using a rubber spatula, gently fold in the grated apple.
5
Pour the batter into the prepared pan, smoothing the top with the spatula. Bake for 35 to 40 minutes, or until a cake tester inserted near the center of the cake comes out clean and the cake springs back when lightly touched. Allow the cake to cool in the pan on a wire rack for 10 minutes, then invert it onto the rack to cool completely.
Eat – B
Despite my sweet teeth, I mostly prefer savory for breakfast. If grains and veggies are not your daybreak cup of tea, try this salad for lunch or dinner. It tastes the same.I made this as a single serving but double or quadruple. It keeps well for a couple of days and travels nicely too!
Ingredients
1/4 cup barley, cooked
1 pickling cucumber, chopped
Handful of cherry tomatoes, chopped
1 tablespoon dill, chopped
1 teaspoon olive oil
1/2 teaspoon-ish red wine vinegar
1 oz feta, crumbled
Salt
Pepper
Combine barley, pinch of salt & up to 1 cup water. Boil & reduce to simmer, cooking until it's just slightly chewy. Drain excess water if there is any. Cool slightly & combine all other ingredients. Adjust pepper, salt & vinegar to taste. I like to assemble it when it's warm. You could add red onion or chives, but even I don't indulge at breakfast. :)
Eat - B
I get many calls for this salad dressing. Before I bought into the precious nature of balancing single estate olive oil and artisanal vinegar in just the right proportions, I ate this and happily. It's got a million uses from salad, to grilled veggies, to steak marinade. My mom called it the house dressing. This version is green. It's got a match in red. And we've always whipped it together in a blender or food processor (hello, Ninja!)
Probably for the first time ever, I tried to measure out ingredients, but adapt to your own taste.
Ingredients
1 big clove garlic
Small handful parsley leaves (less stem)
Small handful dill (less stem)
BLITZ BLENDER
2 tablespoons lemon juice
2-3 tablespoons white wine vinegar
1 tablespoons Dijon mustard
1/4 teaspoon salt
Several grates pepper
BLITZ BLENDER
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons veg or neutral flavor oil
BLITZ AGAIN – Adjust seasonings, oil & vinegar
Note: most recently I used this dressing with a minimal amount of mayo in chicken salad – a winner!
Second note: it keeps really well if fridge. Big batch it!
Eat-B
If at first you don't succeed, fry, fry again.
Really all but a few belligerent green avoiders will eat zucchini when it's pan fried into crunchy deliciousness.
Fry it, you'll like it!
Ingredients
2 medium zucchini, grated and squeezed through a sieve to dry out
3 scallions, chopped – all of the white and halfway up the green
1/4 cup flour
1/4 cup matzo meal (in kosher section or international foods)
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
Grated pepper to taste
*2 pinches cayenne, optional
1 egg
1/3 cup milk
2-3 tablespoons veg oil
Mix dry ingredients, add wet ingredients, stir in veg. Heat oil in fry pan over medium heat until it shimmers. Add spoons of mixture for desired size. Flip when crispy. Drain if you like, but paper towels deflate the crunch. Better on a cookie cooling rack. Sprinkle with salt (take that Mayor Bloomberg!)
Eat – B
I always say if you can't cook, cook soup. It's nearly impossible to make an unfixable mistake. Soup is meat and/or veg with liquid of almost any kind. It can be vegan, gluten free or grain rich, dairy-centric or not, and an easy way to get vegetables into haters. They're not hiding, they're puréed.
For the annual bagel and smoked fish bonanza I've been hosting at the end of Yom Kippur, I've recently added a couple of soup selections. This year chicken with matzah ball and the roasted eggplant tomato.
I didn't roast the tomatoes as they were farmer's market seconds that needed too much skinning and trimming (but a bargain!). But beautiful romas could easily be halved, dressed with olive oil and sent to the oven with the eggplant.
Ingredients
1 medium onion, chopped
2 carrots chopped
Modest handful of fresh basil
5-ish pounds of fresh tomatoes, seeded. Peel if desired.
Olive oil
2-3 cups chicken or vegetable stock or water for thinning
1 eggplant, cubed into size of choice
1 head of garlic, top sliced off to expose cloves
Over medium heat drizzle olive oil in stock pot or Dutch oven. Melt onion 5-10 minutes, adding carrots halfway through. Add tomatoes, a few good pinches of salt, pepper if preferred and cook a good 20 minutes, lowering the heat when it's super bubbly.
Meanwhile, preheat oven 425. Drizzle olive oil over garlic, wrap in foil and put in oven. Toss eggplant with enough olive oil to cover and put on baking sheet in oven. Eggplant takes about 20 minutes depending on size, garlic about 10-15 minutes longer. If it gets too hot, turn down the heat.
Add basil and all but 2 handfuls of eggplant to the stock pot. Squeeze out the roasted garlic, spread one on toast and add the rest to the stock pot. Eat the toast.
Purée the soup and return to pot, adding stock or water for desired consistency. Heat through with the rest of the eggplant. Adjust seasonings.
Note: my daughter said it needed something crunchy.
Croutons: cut stale bread into cubes of any size. Drizzle with olive oil. Toast in fry pan (or oven!) sprinkled with herbs of choice…garlic powder, kosher salt, thyme etc. Toss to avoid burning, turn off heat when crunchy, and toss with Parmesan. Store in zip top.
Eat – B
ps – stores beautifully
Who woulda thunk…best peach season ever is lingering! Today features a fruit crumble. Later this week: pie!
And because stone fruit gods were smiling over the weekend…a farmer's market bargain ($4 for 9 peaches!) could mean peach pie again for the third annual après Thanksgiving. **Assemble and freeze raw pie, bake as normal without defrosting. It's worked before with apple.
I loosely followed a Martha fave for the cobbler. But I doubled the topping (!), peeled the peaches, and subbed a teaspoon of balsamic vinegar for the lemon juice in the fruit. I also cheated the sugar in the filling down to less than 1/2 cup since the fruit was super sweet.
If you put this in the oven before dinner, it's ready for dessert. No need to let it settle for hours like pie.
Eat…with ice cream and a spoon 🙂 – B
I Am Not A Restaurant! 