Apartment Dining

I admit it: I have not been spending a lot of time in the kitchen over the past few weeks. Trips up north and many visitors in town have led to nights away from my stove, and when I do cook, it’s using simple, tested recipes from the past. This will be rectified after Independence Day weekend, but in the meantime, I wanted to share my stand-by recipe for basil and chive pesto. Summer is not the best time to simmer tomatoes for a pasta sauce and this pesto is a great alternative, requiring just fresh ingredients and a food processor or other blending device.

Basil and Chive Pesto
-1 cup tightly packed basil leaves
-1/4 cup chopped chives
-2 peeled garlic cloves
-1/3 cup walnuts
-1/3 cup grated Parmesan cheese
-1/3 to 1/2 cup olive oil, depending on your taste
-Salt and pepper to taste

1) Add basil, chives, garlic, and walnuts to the food processor and pulse a few times to roughly chop. Add olive oil and pulse 3-4 more times. Add Parmesan cheese, pulse until blended, and then add more olive oil if necessary.

2) Taste and add a dash of salt and pepper if desired. Serve on pasta or use as a in place of marinara sauce on homemade pizza.

The folks over at Food Crypt recently posted a link to Michael Pollan discussing his latest book, In Defense of Food, for WBEZ Chicago. It’s a great introduction into Pollan’s work and worth checking out whether you’ve read any of his books or not.

I’m in the middle of In Defense of Food now and it’s reinforcing and expanding on many of the points made in The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Pollan’s detailed look at the Western diet has also made me take a closer look at what I’m consuming and how it can/will effect my health in the long run (members of every generation on one side of my family have dealt with cancer of some portion of the digestive tract, resulting in invasive surgeries and painful recoveries). A quick inventory of a day of eating for me showed well-balanced meals, but my snacks were almost exclusively processed foods like chips, cookies, etc. It’s a reflection of how my diet has been slowly deteriorating over the past few months. I’m consuming less fresh fruit, fewer vegetables, fewer whole grains, and little fiber. As I read a chapter of the book in a train station over the weekend, I was actually eating a bag of Skittles (original flavor).

I am by no means becoming a health-obsessed eater, just a more conscious one. The thesis on the cover of In Defense of Food sets simple guidelines: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

Summer is my least favorite season in terms of weather. It hasn’t always been this way, but now that I live in New York, I dread temperatures over 80° and high humidity more than anything winter could throw at me. I could blame my long walk to the subway (20 minutes) or delicate ancestry (Irish), but either way, I become a wilted, cranky mess if I’m outside for too long in the heat. I know this makes me a total wimp and you’re free to insert any phrases involving heat or kitchens here.

I will admit summer isn’t all bad though. It means there’s an abundance of fabulous items at the farmer’s market and on days when the heat and humidity are tolerable, it can be…well…pleasant. Another perk is summer squash: zucchini, yellow summer squash, pattypan, etc. They’re wonderful grilled and roasted, but I love to cook them with pasta and top with a bit of grated Parmesan. Here’s the easy (and cheap!) recipe. » Read the rest of this entry «

I found myself at a bar in the East Village on Saturday night after dinner and a movie around Union Square. After introductions to friends of friends, we hit on something we all had in common: a love of Momofuku Bakery and Milk Bar. It’s not that uncommon in New York, as Momofuku is now an institution with constant buzz and hoards of fans between its four locations (Milk Bar, Ssam Bar, Noodle Bar, and Ko), but for some reason, passion for the Bakery and Milk Bar always seems to surpass the rest.

We started to exchange descriptions of our favorite items. The pies, the cookies. I gasped in horror when they revealed they had never tried the pork buns. This was warranted horror, as the mingling flavors of thin cucumber slices, hoisin sauce, scallions, and pork belly on a soft steamed bun is as close to culinary transcendence as I’ve ever been.

The pork buns are really not the stars of the Milk Bar though. They can be found at all of the other Momofuku restaurants. At the Milk Bar, it’s all about the desserts. Christina Tosi, Momofuku’s pastry chef, has developed a menu that takes all of your childhood dreams of sugary breakfast cereals and prized lunch bag snacks and melds them into ice cream, cookies, cakes, and pies. Their current soft serve ice cream flavors include red licorice and fireball, and you can have them topped with Nerds, Lemondrops, or Twizzlers. The compost cookie™ (yes, trademarked) has almost every kind of cookie variety melded into one. It’s pictured here along with the chocolate-chocolate cookie that (I believe) is a chocolate cookie with chocolate brownie chunks.

There are of course what would be considered “fancier” desserts, such as the chocolate chip cake with lemon curd, chocolate crumbs, and coffee buttercream, or the playful Arnold Palmer cake with iced tea jelly, lemon mascarpone cream, almond tea crunch. However, I always return to the cookies. It’s the perfect polyamorous marriage of convenience, comfort, and taste, with everything you need in one little handheld package.

It was the desire for those cookies that pulled all of us out of the bar at 1 AM on Saturday morning; six twenty-somethings walking through the streets of the East Village recalling Saved by the Bell episodes in search of a taste of childhood. When we finally arrived after a short walk, the store was mostly dark and two workers were wiping down the counters. The door was locked. FYI: They close at midnight.

When the mood for gnocchi struck earlier this week, I decided to forgo the traditional gnocchi recipe I made before and picked up two sweet potatoes. I am a big fan of pasta dishes with just a hint of sweetness, which I think goes back to my childhood dinners at Little Venice where they add applesauce and sugar to their tomato sauce and cover the dining room walls with old oil paintings. The sugar and paintings are in no way connected, but imagine eating slightly sweet manicotti in a large wood paneled room with antique shop portraits staring down at you. A true Binghamton dining experience.

Although sweet potatoes are relatives of your standard russet potato, their flesh doesn’t behave quite the same way when cooking. Because of this I went on a hunt for a good sweet potato gnocchi recipe to guide the way. » Read the rest of this entry «

I’ve mentioned my Sunday ritual before on this blog. I wake up early, plan the menu for the week, make a shopping list, and then head to the store once Ramsey wakes up for anything I wasn’t able to grab at the farmers’ market. As budgets become tighter, I’ve also added a quick fridge and cupboard inventory to the the routine, rummaging through the deepest recesses of food storage areas to make sure I know exactly what I still have and what needs to be replenished. This was inspired by what was becoming a wasteful practice of cleaning out the fridge after returning from the store to find all sorts of items that could have been used for dishes the previous week, but I had forgotten they were there.

During my inventory this past Sunday, I found a large chunk of ginger left over from dumpling adventure last week, as well as ample sugar, flour, oil, and spices. I decided to make a Ginger Pear Quick Bread that would only require the purchase of two pears, and would also serve as breakfast for much of the week. » Read the rest of this entry «