A brief sojourn to the country

Last weekend I finally escaped New York City and headed upstate to my friend Gideon's country house. As I detailed in this post, Gideon and I like to cook together and we tend to create some really delicious things. The past weekend was no exception. We arrived late at night and got right to work the next morning, making oatmeal griddle cakes for breakfast. The recipe, which we found in the classic Joy of Cooking, is dead simple; you basically just add the usual pancake ingredients (flour, leavening, eggs) to cooked oatmeal, mix, and fry. A great use for leftover oatmeal, they made a filling, hearty breakfast that fortified us for our hike in the frigid woods:

















For dinner that night we roasted a chicken and some potatoes in exactly the same manner as I demonstrated in my recent post on roasted chicken. This one came out just as nicely:

































On the side we enjoyed a refreshing salad of green leaf lettuce, sectioned grapefruits, sliced red onions and avocados dressed with olive oil and rice wine vinegar. The lightness of the salad was a perfect counterpoint the warm, rich and salty chicken and potatoes:

















As good as that whole plate of food was, I think my favorite part of our meal was the little cooks' treat that we made at the beginning as we cleaned the chicken: chopped liver. Gideon happened to have some homemade chicken and matzoh ball soup that he had made with his grandmother, so as any good Jews would do we skimmed the top of its schmaltz (that's chicken fat, used for cooking, for you Goyim out there) and slow-cooked the one liver that came with the chicken, along with some chopped onions, in a small pan. We then seasoned it well with salt and pepper and whirred it up with some fresh parsley in a little electric chopper. Here it is spread on some olive bread and garnished with raw red onion:

















The chicken was a large one and took a while to roast in the oven. As it did, Gideon and I decided that we wanted to bake something, so we made challah bread. For a yeast bread, it's very simple to make and doesn't take too much time. Here's what it looked like after we braided it and let it rise for a second time:

















And here it is after being coated with an egg wash and baked:

















And here it is after being converted to French toast the next morning:

















Think we were done eating by that point? Well, not quite. Late on Sunday afternoon we threw together this chicken salad with parsley, tomatoes, red onion, olives, olive oil and vinegar and made to-go sandwiches to bring in the car:

















Needless to say, after polishing those off I was quite full.

Oatmeal Griddle Cakes
Serves 2-3
Adapted from Joy of Cooking

1. Sift 1 cup of all-purpose flour. Re-sift with 1 1/2 tsp. baking powder and 1/2 tsp. salt.
2. Stir together 1 1/2 c. cooked oatmeal, 1/2 c. milk, and 2 tbsp. melted butter. Add one egg, beaten, and stir to combine.
3. Stir in the dry ingredients until just combined. Fry the cakes on a heated buttered griddle or cast-iron pan, about 3-4 minutes per side. Serve with butter and maple syrup.

Challah Bread
Makes 1 loaf
Adapted from Joy of Cooking

1. In a small bowl, mix 1 packet of active dry yeast with 1/4 c. warm water and 1 1/2 tbsp. sugar. It should froth up; if it does not, discard and try again with different yeast.
2. Measure out 3/4 c. warm water and add a pinch of saffron to it.
3. Sift 3 c. flour with 1 1/2 tsp. salt into a large bowl. Create a well in the center and add 2 eggs, lightly beaten, 2 tbsp. vegetable oil, the saffron water, and the yeast mixture. Using a wooden spoon, stir until combined. The dough will be very sticky.
4. Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and knead, with floured hands, until it becomes smooth and elastic, about 10 minutes. Place the dough in a large bowl that has been oiled and turn it over so that both sides are coated. Cover and let rise in a warm place until doubled in volume, about 1 hour.
5. Punch the dough down and knead it again, briefly, on the floured surface. Create three long, ropey strands of dough and place them on a greased and floured baking sheet. Braid the strands together and tuck the ends underneath. Allow the loaf to rise again, about 1/2 to 1 hour.
6. Preheat the oven to 400°. Make an egg wash of one egg yolk beaten with a little water. Brush it all over the loaf and bake it in the 400° oven for 15 minutes, then turn the heat down to 350° and bake for another 15 minutes. The loaf is done when it is well browned and sounds hollow when tapped on the bottom. Allow it to cool before you slice it.

Snackin' with Steinberg

Earlier in the week my dear friend Gideon Steinberg asked me to come join him at his country house in the Catskills for a few days. I was grateful for the invitation, since I hadn't really been out of the city since graduating from college in late May and the heat, grime and noise were really beginning to wear on me. It was a lovely sojourn and I only wish I could have stayed longer.

Gideon is a really good cook and over the course of our friendship we've made a lot of tasty things to eat together. The past few days were no exception, and I thought I'd share some of our creations. First up is a dead simple guacamole we had as an afternoon snack after swimming in the lake: just two ripe avocadoes mashed up with minced shallot and garlic, some chopped cherry tomatoes, lime juice, salt and fresh chives:

Gideon had this amazing, locally produced whole milk ricotta cheese that was rich, creamy and ever so slightly salty. He used it to top these delicious (and rather elegant) one-bite snacks of basil and a halved cherry tomato:

The main event on Monday night was this jerk chicken from the New York Times that I've been wanting to try since the recipe was published last month. Marinated overnight and grilled over charcoal, it was deeply flavorful, tender and juicy:

We served the chicken with some brown rice and black beans that we cooked together to a porridge-like consistency and flavored with a heaping spoonful of the jerk chicken marinade that we had boiled down into a sauce:

For dessert I served up slices of my grandmother's blueberry cake topped with vanilla ice cream and a quick sauce that I made of just-picked blueberries and a little maple syrup:

And, finally, breakfast on Tuesday morning: toasted whole wheat pita wedges topped with the aforementioned ricotta and, on one side, leftover blueberry sauce; on the other, halved cherry tomatoes, olive oil and salt. Sweet and savory on one plate? Now that's my kind of meal:

At the crossroads of Southeast Asia

I wish that I could say that I was blogging from abroad, but the subject of this post is actually just a choice phrase selected from the paragraph on the front of the takeout menu of Jaya, a Malaysian restaurant in Chinatown where I dined, along with my friend Gideon, on Friday night. Malaysia, the restaurant's owner Selamat Makan writes, "has been a melting pot of rich and exciting cross-cultural cuisine of traditional Malay, Indian, Indonesian, Thai and Chinese influences," adding that "this exciting, delicious, fiery, mild, tantalizing cooking is what we at Jaya present to you for your enjoyment." Cuisine that tastes of five different Asian countries and manages to be both fiery and mild at the same time? Count me in!

All jokes aside, the food at Jaya is some seriously good stuff, with layered flavors like chiles, coconut milk, cilantro and soy permeating each dish. Friday night was my first time eating there; it was Gideon's pick for dinner. When we arrived at about 7 p.m. the place was already bustling--always a good sign--with a healthy mix of white people, some of them likely tourists, but also a fair number of Asian families. Everything on the menu sounded so good to me that I didn't even know where to begin and was forced to make a last-minute decision when the waitress came by. I chose the dish on the menu that sounded least familiar to me, Yang Tao Foo Noodle, described as "bean curd and vegetable stuffed with fish paste in curry broth or clear soup with egg noodle." I opted for the curry broth. I wasn't quite sure what would be brought to the table, but I wasn't dissapointed when it looked like this:

















And it smelled even better, with the sharp herbal scent of lemongrass cutting through the vapors of rich coconut milk and spicy chile paste rising from the steaming bowl. This was basically a big bowl of thick and intensely flavored curry filled with chewy egg noodles and topped with a few very interesting items: that cracker-looking thing at the top of the bowl was a thin, salty, deep-fried piece of fish skin that was actually very tasty, especially dipped into the broth; the chunk of tofu that you see was, in fact, stuffed with a hunk of creamy fish paste and some minced vegetables; the eggplant was tender and soaked in curry goodness; and the whole of the dish was showered with chopped scallions as well as a few bits of crunchy fried onion bits. I was full halfway through eating this and gave the rest to Gideon, so at $6.75 dinner was truly a bargain. Most of the other items on the menu--which were all unusual and intriguing--are under $9, and the most expensive dish offered costs $14.95. I know I'll definitely be returning soon.

Jaya
90 Baxter St. (at White St.)
(212) 219-3331

Lucky Eight Restaurant

A few weeks ago, a bunch of us headed down to Sunset Park, Brooklyn to a restaurant called Lucky Eight to celebrate Gideon's birthday. Sunset Park has a sizable Chinese population, and 8th Avenue, where many of the Chinese restaurants and shops are concentrated, is sometimes referred to as Brooklyn Chinatown. I've been eating out in this area for years, thanks entirely to my friend James, who is Chinese and lives in the neighborhood. Starting in high school, James would periodically lead a group of intrepid eaters to some fabulous restaurant for dim sum. We would almost never consult a menu; rather, James would just ask our server (in Chinese, of course!) what was good that day, and a parade of sumptuous (and, for most of us, exotic) dishes would soon crowd our table.

Now that I live one neighborhood above Sunset Park, I've been shopping and eating there much more often. The grocery stores, vegetable stands and fish stalls are incredibly bustling and lively, with vendors shouting out offers and attempting to lure customers to their wares, making for an engaging shopping (and people-watching) experience. Recently, James, our friend Sam and I ate dinner in a fantastic restaurant called Lucky Eight that James (of course) picked out. The dishes we ate were unlike any Chinese food I had ever had before--much, much cleaner and lighter than the greasy takeout a lot of us are accustomed to, and with smooth, nuanced and balanced flavors. The restaurant also happens to be especially welcoming to non-Chinese diners: all the servers speak English (often not the case in other restaurants in the area), and the menu features large, full-color photos of all its specialty dishes, making it a lot easier to order. Lucky Eight made such an impression on me that when Gideon asked for a restaurant recommendation for his birthday it was the first place that came to mind.

What follows are some photos of the food we ate that night. I have to say that I don't remember the individual prices of each dish, but what I do remember is that we ordered 6 dishes and a bunch of beers and we paid $18 each, including tax and tip. For the quality of the food and the hospitality of the service I'd say that's a pretty remarkable deal. So go! You won't be sorry.

We started with some duck's feet. Yes, the idea of eating feet might be unsavory, and the gelatinous, chewy-crunchy texture of the dish is likely off putting for those of us not used to consuming such things. But I have to say that this dish is truly delicious. I first ate it with James and Sam, and made sure to order it again. The feet are served cold, deboned, and, along with some sweet, lightly pickled shreds of carrot and daikon radish (and a few slivers of red chiles for a touch of heat), tossed in a vinaigrette-type mixture of sesame oil and rice wine vinegar. It's a very refreshing dish and a gentle introduction to the nose-to-tail type eating that is so common in all regions of China:

















Next up was a stir-fry of impossibly tender and juicy jumbo shrimp with sweet, crunchy candied walnuts and large pieces of warm, ripe pineapple. The vegetables included crisp green beans and chunks of onion. A scattering of toasted sesame seeds tied everything together:

















For a vegetable dish we chose eggplant with abalone, a species of giant sea snail (!). I had never eaten abalone before and I was a little intimidated by the thought of it--I figured that it would be plain-tasting and very chewy. I was totally wrong; it had a mild, but tasty, flavor and a smooth, soft texture that matched beautifully with the creamy Japanese eggplants. The mix was coated in a sweet soy-based sauce and crowned with a few slices of scallion:

















For a meat dish we chose a lamb hotpot. Again, I had eaten this previously with James and Sam and couldn't get it out of my head. The stew is brought to the table over a little gas flame and continues to bubble away as you eat, wafting its succulent aroma over the whole table. The dish included tender, falling-apart pieces of lamb, some chewy, delicious slices of bean curd skin (one of my favorite ingredients in Chinese cooking), slices of lotus root and thick leaves of Chinese cabbage. The broth surrounding all of those tasty ingredients was thick, meaty and rich:

















And lastly we ate a simple, straightforward dish of baby bok choy with garlic and ginger. The glistening little globes reminded me of emeralds:

















Oh yeah, I told you we ordered six dishes, right? Some of those among us with less adventurous palates ordered a type of rice noodle dish, but I didn't like it--it was heavy on curry seasoning but also somewhat bland at the same time. So I'm not including it here. Artistic license, doncha know?


Lucky Eight Restaurant
5204 8th Ave. (between 52nd St and 53rd St)
(718) 851-8862

Irish eyes are smiling

Being that there is nary a drop of Irish blood in my Eastern European Jewish body, I don't make a habit of celebrating St. Patrick's Day (well, save for the fact that March 17th also happens to be the birth date of my longtime friend and fellow snacker--and, I might add, Jew--Gideon). But because traditional holidays are a great excuse to indulge in national cuisines, I decided some time ago that I couldn't let another St. Patty's Day pass without making colcannon. As Wikipedia dutifully informs us, colcannon is a mix of mashed potatoes and shredded, cooked cabbage or kale. In its most basic permutation, the potatoes are mashed with just salt and pepper, and combined with simply steamed greens. More elaborate preparations call for a touch of milk or butter (or both) in the potatoes, and for the greens to be sauteed--possibly with a small amount of bacon or ham--before joining the potatoes in the pot. Whichever way you choose to make it, colcannon is a hearty, filling side dish that's perfect for the winter months--or for providing a solid base for pints of green beer, if that's your style.

I had never made colcannon before tonight, but, as you can see from the above description of the dish, it's dead simple. After browsing through a few "recipes" online--it's more of a method, really--I settled on a slightly more detailed version. I enriched my mashed potatoes with a small amount of scalded milk, and I also sauteed the strips of kale with some butter and a few slices of green onion (you can use any type of onion you want; I happened to have the green ones lying around, and I needed to use them up. Alternatively, some chives snipped into the finished dish would provide a nice allium flavor). From start to finish, the colcannon took about 20 minutes and required almost no effort. Piled high next to two burnished sausages (what's more Irish than potatoes and sausage?), I'd say it made a meal fit for Patrick himself.

















Colcannon with Kale
Serves 4

1. Peel and quarter 2 lbs. of starchy potatoes, such as Idaho or Russets, and place in a medium pot. Fill pot with cold water, covering pototoes by about an inch. Set the pot on the stove over a high flame, cover it, and allow it to come to a boil. Drop the heat down to medium, uncover pot, and allow potatoes to cook at a low boil until they are just tender when pierced with a knife, about 10-12 minutes.
2. While potatoes are cooking, strip the leaves of one medium-sized bunch of kale, discarding the tough stems. You should have about 2 cups of kale leaves. Place the kale in a steamer set over simmering water, cover, and cook until kale is tender but still bright green, about 6 minutes. Remove steamer to the sink and rinse the kale in cold water. Drain well.
3. Squeeze all excess liquid from kale and transfer it to a cutting board. Cut it into wide strips.
4. In a medium, heavy-bottomed skillet, heat 3 tbsp. of butter over a medium flame. Add 6 green onions, white parts only, sliced, or 1/4 cup diced white or yellow onion. Cook until slightly wilted, about 4 minutes, then add sliced kale. Cook, stirring occasionally, for about 4 more minutes.
5. Drain potatoes and return to hot pot. Add 1/2 cup of milk, preferably not nonfat, and cover pot to allow milk to heat up. Uncover pot, season heavily with salt and pepper, and mash potatoes coarsely, leaving some chunks. Add sauteed kale and mix well. Add two small pats of butter, mix, and taste for seasoning, adding more salt or pepper if neccessary. Serve hot.

Why I love leftovers

I've never understood people who don't like leftovers. Whatever their reasons may be--that the food they prepare will never taste as good as it did when it was made fresh, that they get sick of eating the same thing (no matter how delicious it is) two or three times in a row, that they simply don't have the refrigerator space--I don't get it. I love leftovers. Leftovers, actually, sort of define my cooking style. I don't often follow recipes, preferring to rifle through my fridge (and freezer), taking stock of what needs to be used up and how it would best be transformed into something else. Leftovers don't bore me; they inspire me.

I even like leftover food that I didn't make in the first place. Working at a food magazine and also in catering, I'm often sent home with extra food that might otherwise get thrown out. Such was the case last weekend when I worked a fancy, exclusive party on Fire Island. A ton of perfectly cooked, expertly seasoned filet mignon remained unserved at the end of the night, and I packed away two particularly succulent-looking steaks to bring on the bus ride home. They made their way onto my dinner plate a few nights later when Gideon (of Snackin' with Steinberg fame) came over to eat. While he made his excellent rendition of guacamole, I sliced the steaks thinly and laid them over a salad of soft romaine and slivers of red onion, heaped them with fresh cilantro and chopped salty peanuts, then dressed the whole with a mixture of lime juice, fish sauce, sugar and vegetable oil. And so out of distant French origins, a delicious Thai beef salad was born. You still don't want your leftovers? Pass 'em over to me.


















Thai Beef Salad with Lime Dressing
Serves 2

1. Wash and dry two generous servings of romaine or red leaf lettuce, about half a large head. Tear them into large pieces and divide between two plates.
2. Thinly slice 1/2 of a large red onion and divide it between the two plates, distributing it evenly over the lettuce.
3. Thinly slice one medium to large portion of rare, seasoned steak--the cut is not that important as this is a dish to make with leftover meat--and fan the slices out over the salads.
4. Take a good handful of fresh cilantro--stems and all--and tear it up, sprinkling it over the salads.
5. Coarsely chop a large handful of roasted salted peanuts and sprinkle them over the two salads.
6. Make the dressing: in a small bowl, combine the juice of two limes with about 1 tsp. soy sauce, 1 tsp. fish sauce, 1 1/2 tsp. sugar, a pinch of salt and about 3 tbsp. vegetable oil. Whisk mixture and taste; you might need to adjust the ingredients if the dressing is too sour, too sweet or otherwise unbalanced.
7. Dress the salads, drizzling the dressing evenly to ensure that all the ingredients are well coated.

Claudia Roden's orange and almond cake

When you're as food-obsessed as I am, it makes sense to surround yourself with people on your wavelength, so it comes as no surprise that some of my closest friends also happen to be excellent cooks/bakers/snackers. My adventures in cooking with my pal Gideon have been widely chronicled on this site. Patricia, who sadly lives in France nowadays, is the queen of hosting potlucks, and Mathilde, who lives in New York but hails from Paris, is the master of the quiche and makes a mean crêpe, to boot. Just to mention France one more time, Bonnie and I founded a dinner club together with our friends in Toulouse last year, and I think it's safe to say that her dinners were the most heavily anticipated--she made a mapo dofu last Chinese New Year that blew my mind (and, to a certain extent, my tongue--those Sichuan peppercorns can be fiery!) Despite all these heavyweight contenders, I think it's actually my friend Willy who can go head to head with me in terms of food fixation. He and I cook together all the time, and when I need a culinary companion for a far-flung peregrination to Queens or deep south Brooklyn, he's usually game to make the trek with me.

Willy also happens to be an excellent baker. He's prepared my birthday cakes several times--this past year, it was a white layer cake filled with homemade raspberry jam and draped with homemade marzipan. His no-knead bread, which he makes routinely, puts mine to shame, and I've also tasted potato bread, rye bread, and Anadama bread that he's made. A few months ago, I was over at Willy's for lunch, and for dessert he served a beguiling orange and almond cake the likes of which I had never tasted: it had a ton of texture from the ground almonds, a powerful perfume from the oranges, and an underlying bitterness to complement its sweetness. What most attracted me about this cake, though, was the unusual way in which it was made: Willy told me that to make the batter, he boiled two whole oranges for hours, then ground them up, peels and all, to incorporate into the cake mix. That slight bitterness I tasted was coming from the orange pith. I loved the idea of this recipe, and I had to try it.

Several weeks later, I found the occasion to make it: I was attending a Rosh Hashanah dinner at my cousins' house in New Jersey, and I volunteered to bring a dessert. I picked up the ingredients I knew I would need, and then called Willy to confirm the method of preparation. As I simmered the oranges in boiling water, an intense, almost incense-like fragrance filled my apartment. I couldn't wait to taste this cake. When the oranges were ready, I puréed them in the food processor, then set them in the fridge to cool as I worked through the rest of the recipe: grinding the almonds, separating the eggs. Then I put the whole thing together, poured it into a pan, and slid it into the oven to bake.

All that work had made me hungry, so I peered into the fridge to see what I could make myself for lunch. And that's when I saw it: that bright, vivid, luscious-smelling orange purée, still cooling in my fridge. Very distinctly not baking in my cake. My heart fell. Who needs a plain old almond cake? I thought. It's been done!

When my boring, stupid almond cake emerged from the oven about 45 minutes later, I tried to salvage the situation. I mixed some of the orange purée with some water and sugar, in an attempt to make a glaze. I poked some holes in the still-warm cake and brushed on the glaze, hoping that it would imbue the cake with its citrusy freshness. And in the end, of course, the cake was fine--but it barely tasted of orange. It lacked that exotic quality that the cake I'd tasted at Willy's had in spades.

Luckily, I was able, through my haze of anger, to have the foresight to stick the rest of the unused orange purée in a container in the freezer, to be deployed at some other time. I finally got my chance this past weekend, when my brother hosted a cassoulet party at our parents' house. Bravely, I volunteered, yet again, to bring dessert. I went through all the same steps, but of course, this time I remembered to include that precious orange purée in my confection. I also adjusted the cooking time and temperature a little bit, remembering that while Willy's cake had a more crumbly texture, I was looking for a softer one in mine. And I'm happy to report that the end result was just as glorious I had hoped for all those many months ago when I first made the cake: moist, fragrant and vivid in color from the orange peel and egg yolks, this cake truly has the power to transport you to the Middle East.
























Middle Eastern Orange and Almond Cake
Adapted slightly from this recipe
Makes one cake

Ingredients:

- 2 oranges
- 6 eggs, separated
- 1 1/2 c. ground almonds
- 1 c. sugar
- 1 tsp. baking powder
- 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
- 1/2 tsp. almond extract
- 1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
- 1/2 tsp. salt

Preparation:

1. Preheat the oven to 375°. Prepare a medium spring form pan: butter the bottom and sprinkle with additional almond meal.
2. Wash oranges thoroughly, place them in a pot, cover with water and boil for 2 hours. Remove from water, cut open and remove seeds, then purée in a food processor until completely smooth. Set aside.
3. Combine ground almonds, orange purée, egg yolks, sugar, baking powder, vanilla, almond extract, cinnamon, and salt in a large bowl, mixing well.
4. Whip egg whites to somewhere between soft and stiff peaks. Fold gently, in two batches, into the yolk mixture. Pour into prepared pan and bake for 45 minutes or until top is well browned but center still appears moist.

My new favorite grocery store

A little while back I had a package of ground lamb sitting in my freezer begging to be used up. I finally figured out what to do with it when I read this post alerting me to the existence of Patel Grocery, a little Indian shop located in Sunset Park not too far from my home in the South Slope. Lamb plus Indian spices? Yes, please.

Not only do I love to eat Indian food--I might even declare it my favorite cuisine if I were willing to play favorites with food, which I am not--I love to cook it, too. Preparing Indian food is one of the few exceptions I find myself making to my general no-recipes rule of cooking. Indian recipes are complex, relying on a delicate and precise art of the layering of small amounts of potent, fragrant dried spices. The end result, when it turns out right, is incredibly flavorful and completely captivating.

You can't wing this stuff--or at least I can't. So when it's time for me to cook up some Indian fare, I turn to the masters: Julie Sahni or Madhur Jaffrey, both well established and well-respected food writers and cookbook authors. On this particular occasion, I opened my well-worn copy of Sahni's Classic Indian Cooking to the chapter on meat and found my way to a recipe entitled Safaid Keema, or Ground Meat in Scented White Sauce. In the recipe, ground lamb is simmered with onions, whole milk yogurt, chunks of potatoes, and (of course) a precise blend of dried ground spices. I was sold.

With my ingredient list in hand, my friend and dining companion on this particular occasion (and countless others) Gideon and I hopped on our bikes and pedaled the ten minutes to Patel Grocery. We found ourselves in a little store teeming with vegetables, spices, lentils and several varieties of rice--and one very friendly and generous owner. Once we had what we needed for dinner (plus several other impulse buys on my part), we biked furiously back to my apartment to answer the call of our empty bellies. About an hour later, our efforts were rewarded with a big pot of rich, warming lamb and potatoes, which we served over basmati rice and a bit of sauteed eggplant. My kitchen smelled like Indian food for days--and that's a good thing.



















Safaid Keema (Ground Lamb in Yogurt Sauce)
Adapted from Classic Indian Cooking by Julie Sahni
Serves 6

Ingredients:

4 tbsp. vegetable oil
2 1/2 cups finely chopped onions
1 tbsp. minced garlic
2 tbsp. grated fresh ginger
1 1/2 lbs. lean ground lamb
4 medium potatoes, quartered
1 cup frozen green peas
1 1/2 tsp. ground cumin
1/2 tsp. ground cloves
1 tsp. ground cardamom
1/2 tsp. red pepper flakes
2/3 cup plain whole milk yogurt
1/2 cup milk
2 tsp. kosher salt

Preparation:

1. Heat the oil in a large, wide pan and add the onions. Cook over medium heat until the onions turn light golden brown, about 15 minutes, stirring occasionally to prevent burning.
2. Stir in the garlic and ginger and cook for 2 minutes. Add the lamb, breaking it up in the pan with a wooden spoon. Cook until the meat loses all pink and begins to brown.
3. Add all the remaining ingredients except for the frozen peas, stir, and add 1 1/2 cups hot water. Bring the mixture to a boil, reduce the heat, and simmer, covered, for 20 - 30 minutes. Uncover and add the peas. Simmer, uncovered, for an additional 15 - 20 minutes. When sauce is thick, shut off the heat and serve over rice or with bread such as naan or poori.

More Chinese food

A few months ago, I read the excellent food memoir by British author Fuchsia Dunlop entitled Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper. In the book, Dunlop, who by now has made a career of eating her way through China and writing about what she finds, goes back to the beginning of her story, relating how she first landed in the country and how--by ducking into noodle shops, flagging down street food vendors and inviting herself into the kitchens of local restaurants--she discovered her true calling. Dunlop has traveled all over China and has written magazine articles and cookbooks describing the cuisines of many of the country's diverse regions, yet the one location that she considers her true home abroad is the Sichuan (or Szechuan) province. It is while living in its capital, Chengdu, that she truly falls for Chinese food, characterized, in that region, by prodigious use of spicy, warming ingredients such as Szechuan peppercorns and chiles of all varieties. Though I had some prior knowledge and appreciation of Sichuan cuisine (a restaurant called Szechuan Gourmet is one of my favorites in New York), reading Dunlop's impassioned and evocative descriptions of the local fare left me completely tantalized--and wanting more. I didn't just want to eat Sichuan food; I wanted to cook it myself. Luckily, Dunlop is also the author of an incredibly comprehensive, highly regarded and easy-to-follow compendium of Sichuan cuisine entitled Land of Plenty. Minutes after finishing Dunlop's memoir, I was online ordering her cookbook.

While I waited for it to arrive, I set out to obtain all the sauces, seasonings and ingredients I would need to prepare the recipes. Though Sichuan cuisine is best known for its numbing peppercorns, fiery chiles and hot, deep red oils, the style of cooking relies on several more key ingredients in order to achieve the incredible fullness and depth of flavor that characterizes true Sichuan food. In order to stock my pantry, I ventured into Brooklyn Chinatown (one of my favorite places in the city to explore) and picked up Szechuan peppercorns, dried red "Heaven-facing" chiles, fermented black beans, light and dark soy sauces, toasted sesame oil, Chinese sesame paste, Chinkiang vinegar, Shaoxing rice wine, Sichuan chili bean paste, pickled chili paste, Tianjin preserved vegetables, potato starch and dried star anise. All cited by Dunlop as key ingredients in Sichuan cuisine, the items in this haul cost me about $17 total. Now I was ready to cook.

So far I've tried two recipes from Land of Plenty, and both have been extremely quick and easy, with delicious results. The first was Dry-Fried Green Beans. In this dish, trimmed green beans are fried in hot oil until slightly browned and softened, then removed from the pan and set aside. In the same pan, you then stir-fry ground pork with a small amount of garlicky, gingery preserved vegetables and a bit of soy sauce. Once the pork is cooked through, the beans are added back to the pan, and the whole dish is finished with a drizzle of sesame oil. That's it. The whole thing takes about 10 minutes to prepare, and is lip-smackingly good. I first prepared this for dinner with Gideon while he was in town, and a few days later made the same dish for lunch for myself, using broccolini in place of the green beans and eating it over white rice--authentic, no, but delicious, yes. Here are the green beans from that first go-around:

















The second dish I made from the cookbook was Gong Bao, aka Kung Pao, Chicken. An iconic Sichuan dish that combines a thick, sweet and sour sauce with spicy Szechuan peppercorns and dried chiles and adds the salty crunch of peanuts for good measure, Gong Bao chicken is a Chinese takeout staple but is very simple (and cheap!) to prepare at home. You start by marinating cubed chicken breasts in soy sauce, rice wine and potato starch, thereby "velveting" the chicken, a technique that ensures tender, juicy meat and also aids in thickening the final dish due to the inclusion of starch. As the chicken marinates, you stir together a sauce of sugar, more potato starch, soy sauce, vinegar, and sesame oil and set it aside. When you're ready to cook, you heat the peppercorns and chiles in oil, toss in the chicken and its marinade, add chopped garlic, ginger and scallions and stir-fry until the chicken is cooked through. Finally, you pour in the sauce, which, as it hits the heat, turns beautifully glossy and thick. Toss in a handful of peanuts, serve over hot, sticky white rice, and you've got a meal that's bound to impress your friends as much as it did mine--in this case my roommate and her boyfriend:

















Because I think it's only fair to adhere to copyright law, and because I really think Land of Plenty is a book worth purchasing, I can't include Dunlop's exact recipes here on the blog. However, I urge you to buy the cookbook--or at least check it out from your local library. If you like Chinese food even a little bit, you won't be disappointed--and, moreover, you'll probably learn a lot.

Dinner al fresco

It's the 4th of July, and my plans to swim and cavort on the beach all day have been foiled by the tempermental weather, which has been threatening to thunderstorm all day. Being stuck in my house, I thought I'd revisit two recent outdoor dinners--my favorite kind of dinners, really. The first was procured from Pedro's Spanish American Restaurant in DUMBO a couple of weeks ago when my friend Gideon and I were waiting for a production of Macbeth to start. With only about an hour to spare but empty stomachs that demanded nourishment, we happened upon Pedro's, which I had passed many times and had been meaning to try. Pedro's is an absolute dive, with little in the way of ambience but much in the way of charm, with its brightly colored murals and little tables and chairs spilling out onto the street corner it's located on. In my book, a dive is usually a very good thing, so I was glad I finally got to sample some of Pedro's fare. I didn't really see anything Spanish at Pedro's--it's mostly vaguely Mexican or South American food sitting in glass cases--you point to the meat you want (most likely some sort of roast or stew) and then specify what kind of rice (white or yellow) and beans (black or red) you'd like, and then sit down at one of the restaurant's indoor picnic tables, or, better yet, get your food to go and take it to one of DUMBO's many lovely outdoor spots.

The food at Pedro's is cheap and filling, and you get a huge portion, but it's really nothing special. The beef dish that I got was well-seasoned and tender, and the rice and beans were satisfying, but there wasn't anything particularly outstanding about it. But that's OK: Pedro's isn't a destination restaurant but rather a dependable, and economical, neighborhood place. And I like those sorts of places. Here's the beef that I got (some sort of flank steak, I believe), along with some yellow rice and black beans, of course:

I got two dinners out of that plate of food, and it cost me $8. Not bad, right? The best thing about this meal, though, was undoubtedly the setting under the Manhattan Bridge where we ate it:

And onto the next. Another highly enjoyable, and more notably delicious, outdoor meal that I had recently was a heaping takeout container full of Peppa's Jerk Chicken that my friends and I took to Prospect Park to eat. My friend Malcolm recently moved to Leffert's Gardens in Brooklyn, a primarily West Indian and Caribbean neighborhood located along the southeast side of the park. Its main drag, Flatbush Avenue, is heavily dotted with tiny jerk chicken restaurants. So how to choose one, particuarly if you're new to the area? Your best bet is to look for the most crowded spot: locals always know what's up. So as we strolled to the park last Thursday evening, Malcolm, Becca, Sarah, Shannon and I kept our eyes peeled for such a place. And we found it at Peppa's, which at around 7 PM was already forming a line out the door. We each got the $8 medium plate, consisting of a mountain of moist rice and peas flavored with coconut milk, some fried sweet plantains, a little bit of salad tossed with sesame oil, and a heap of tender, spicy but not too hot jerk chicken that tasted of allspice and scotch bonnet peppers (incidentally, the New York Times recently ran a great article on jerk chicken featuring a recipe that I'm dying to try). Because the chicken's not too spicy, you'll want to be sure to add some of the vinegary hot sauce that Peppa's offers. Here's my plate:

Eaten in yet another unbeatable Brooklyn setting:

Ah, summer.

Pedro's Spanish American Restaurant
73 Jay Street (between Front St and Water St)
(718) 625-0031

Peppa's Jerk Chicken
738 Flatbush Avenue (between Parkside Ave and Woodruff Ave)
(347) 406-2515