ROAST CHICKEN WITH POTATOES, ASPARAGUS, AND LEMON

This is a recipe perfect for the transition from winter to spring. After I cooked it on Sunday night, while we were digging into plates piled high with lemony, juicy chicken, tender browned potatoes, and perfectly roasted asparagus, I mentioned to A that I’d found the recipe on the Martha Stewart Web site.

“God bless Martha!” he proclaimed, sucking a leg bone clean and wiping his fingers. “Winfrey and Stewart in ’08!”

I pointed out that, as a convicted felon, Martha can’t even vote, so it’s doubtful she can hold an elected office. Neither of us was sure whether this also means she isn’t eligible for an appointed position, but we tentatively settled upon naming her Secretary of State. Surely (even though it was more likely created by her minions at the magazine) Martha deserves some sort of honor for bringing us this delectable, insanely easy recipe. Seriously: toss potatoes and butter in pan and bake; add chicken and bake; add asparagus and lemon and thyme and bake; eat. That’s pretty much all there is to it. It’s the kind of thing that sounds so simple it can’t possibly taste like anything special, but not so! After dinner, while ostensibly cleaning the kitchen, I kept delaying rinsing out the roasting pan so I could dip leftover potatoes in the remaining pan juices.


1½ pounds small new potatoes, halved
3 tablespoons butter
salt and pepper
1 whole cut-up chicken (about 3 pounds)
1 pound asparagus
1 lemon, cut into 8 wedges
6 sprigs fresh thyme

1. Preheat oven to 475 degrees.

2. Place potatoes and 1½ tablespoons butter in a large, shallow roasting pan; season with salt and pepper. Roast, tossing once, until potatoes are golden, 20–25 minutes.

3. Place chicken, skin side up, on top of potatoes and season with salt and pepper. Roast until chicken begins to brown about 20–25 minutes.

4. Scatter asparagus, lemon, and thyme around chicken. Cut remaining 1½ tablespoons butter into small pieces and sprinkle on top. Roast until asparagus is tender and chicken is opaque throughout (and nicely browned), 5–15 minutes. Serve chicken and vegetables drizzled with pan juices.

Serves: 4
Time: 1 hour 15 minutes

FALAFEL WITH CILANTRO YOGURT SAUCE

Made this last Thursday night. Be forewarned, it’s not falafel as you might expect to find it in a restaurant; maybe a better term would be “chickpea burger” or “hummus fritter.” Whatever it is, it’s good: light, healthy, not hard to make. Basically you’re just making a modified, thicker, cheerfully green version of hummus—pureeing garbanzos in the blender with seasonings—and then pan-frying it. The cayenne adds a nice, subtle heat, nicely balanced by the cool, refreshing cilantro-lemon yogurt sauce.

I’ve had this recipe for ages, taken from some long-forgotten source. I made it for the first time when I was living the swingin’ studio-apartment life in St. Paul, and it didn’t turn out so great, so I shelved it. When I unearthed it again after my move to California, I nearly got rid of it. Instead, I gave it another try, and I’m so glad I did. With a bit more cooking experience under my belt, I realized my problem the first time around had been that the recipe was just bonkers. Pureeing the ingredients in the blender creates a smooth, sticky, semi-liquid batter, like a stiff hummus. Yet somehow, the recipe was asking me to form this mess into patties with my hands and dredge them in flour, an endeavor that naturally led to less-than-perfect results. It seemed much more sensible to treat the mixture like a fritter batter, which is what I did: I just stirred in a bit of extra flour to give it some body, spooned it into the pan in four separate dollops, and squashed each one down. I also made sure to get the oil good and hot, something I was always too lily-livered to do as a beginning cook. With these modifications, the falafels fried up perfectly, making the recipe a keeper. Finally, my obsession with fritters pays off!

1 cup plain yogurt
1 cup chopped fresh cilantro
1 cup chopped onion
5 large garlic cloves, chopped
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
½ teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 (15-ounce) can garbanzo beans, rinsed and drained
3 tablespoons plus ½ cup all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 large egg
olive oil
4 warm pocket pita breads, cut in half
sliced tomatoes
lettuce

1. Whisk yogurt, ½ cup cilantro, ¼ cup onion, 1 chopped garlic clove, lemon juice, and ¼ teaspoon cayenne in a medium bowl; season with salt and pepper. Chill until ready to serve.

2. Blend garbanzo beans, 3 tablespoons flour, cumin, remaining ½ cup cilantro, 4 garlic cloves, and ¼ teaspoon cayenne in a blender or food processor until almost smooth. Add egg and remaining ¾ cup onion and blend until onion is finely chopped. Transfer mixture to bowl; sprinkle with salt and pepper. Gradually mix in about ¼ cup more flour, until batter reaches desired consistency.

3. Pour enough oil into a large, heavy skillet to coat the bottom; heat over medium-high heat. When fully hot, drop in ¼ of the batter and press down with the back of a spoon to make a patty. Repeat with remaining batter to make 4 patties. Cook until crisp and golden, about 8 minutes per side.

4. Cut each patty in half. Slide a half patty, sliced tomato, and lettuce into each pita pocket. Spoon in some yogurt mixture.

Serves: 4
Time: 30 minutes

CHICKEN BREASTS WITH FRESH MOZZARELLA

I continue to lag behind in my postings; I made this recipe a week ago. But even though it’s old news, I thought you should know about it, because it’s a reliable, no-fuss way to dress up a chicken breast. I’ve made it at least six times before, often to use up mozzarella left over from another recipe. But I never got around to writing it up, probably because it’s almost too simple to talk about, just sautéed chicken breasts with cheese and basil and a classy pan sauce. This recipe is good to make on a weeknight after a long workday and commute, or on a summer evening when you don’t feel like using the stove for more than 15 minutes or washing more than one pan. Have salad on the side or, as I did this time, roasted asparagus. Since A was working late, I experimented a little, making my cheesy chicken breast (drizzled with the pan sauce and nestled into a handful of on-the-verge-of-wilting salad greens from the bottom of the crisper drawer) into a sandwich on toasted leftover no-knead bread. It wasn’t amazing, but it was nice.

4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts (about 1½ pounds)
* Or 2 large breasts, each cut in half horizontally to make 4
salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 garlic clove, peeled and slightly crushed
½ cup dry white wine
4 ounces fresh mozzarella, cut into 4 slices
4 large leaves fresh basil

1. Rinse the chicken and pat dry. Season with salt and pepper.

2. Melt the butter in a large skillet over medium heat and add the garlic. Add the chicken breasts and cook 6–10 minutes, until golden brown on both sides and almost cooked through. Remove chicken from pan and place on a plate.

3. Add the wine to the pan, scraping to release any browned bits on the bottom, and simmer briefly to reduce the sauce by half. Return the chicken to the pan and cook 1 minute.

4. Place a slice of fresh mozzarella and a basil leaf on top of each chicken breast. Cover the pan, remove it from the heat, and set aside for a few minutes to let the mozzarella soften and begin to melt. Sprinkle with chicken with additional salt and pepper as desired. Remove the garlic clove from the pan and discard. Place each chicken breast on a plate and spoon sauce over it.

Serves: 4
Time: 25 minutes

STRAWBERRY SHORTCAKE

Monday was my thirtieth birthday. Birthdays, especially milestone birthdays, are always an excellent excuse for gluttony, so even though I’d be receiving cake at the office, a Chinese dinner on Monday night, and a beach bonfire with a homemade-marshmallow smorgasbord the following weekend, I decided that on Sunday night, my birthday eve, I should cook some treats for myself. Plus, we had a guest, A’s mom, so I could pass my feast off as hospitality instead of selfishness. I made the infamous Brie pasta (which, due to its all-out decadence and my passionate love for it, I’d prudently avoided making for more than a year) and a nice green salad. Then I made strawberry shortcake.

I’d bought an obscene amount of strawberries at the farmers’ market that morning (a half-flat, six pint baskets, for $8). I sliced about a basket and a half of them and put them in a bowl with some sugar to macerate (hee, I love that word) while I made the biscuits.

Though I’ll contentedly eat strawberries and whipped cream over pound cake or angel food cake, or even those round divoted “strawberry shortcake” bases from the grocery store, I don’t call that real strawberry shortcake. Real strawberry shortcake should be made with biscuits. But since I’m not a baker or a glutton for punishment, and it was my birthday and I felt I deserved to take a shortcut, I made the biscuits from Bisquick, using the recipe on the side of the box (I halved it, so it conveniently made just three). They were easy and they tasted great. But to compensate, I made real whipped cream, which I’d never done before. I chilled the bowl and the beaters in the refrigerator. I poured the cream into the bowl and beat it with the electric hand mixer. It took long enough that I started to worry it would never firm up (and started sighing for a KitchenAid stand mixer), but it finally started to thicken, at which point I added a little sugar and vanilla. Finally, after a bit more beating, I achieved soft peaks. To serve, I broke up the still-warm biscuits with my hands into three bowls, spooned the juicy strawberries on top, and scooped on the whipped cream.

I don’t eat strawberry shortcake often, and whenever I eat it, a tide of nostalgia washes over me. It reminds me, intensely, wistfully, of childhood summers. (Actually, what it truly reminds me of is strawberry pie, absolutely my favorite treat my mother ever made, probably because, given the briefness of strawberry season in Minnesota, it was so rare and fleeting. I never felt like I got enough of it. Now I don’t get my mom’s version at all, and even the inferior store or restaurant versions are hard to find.) Anyway, what I’m trying to say was that this strawberry shortcake was heavenly. Now that I know how easy it is to make, I’m going to be tempted to make it often throughout California’s ridiculously long strawberry season. Certainly I might have to make it again this weekend; after all, I’ve still got at least three pints of strawberries to use up.

1½ pints fresh strawberries
2–4 tablespoons sugar
1 and 1/6 cup Bisquick
1½ tablespoons butter, melted
¼ cup milk
1½ tablespoons sugar
whipping cream
1 teaspoon sugar
1 drop vanilla

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

2. Remove the stems from the strawberries and cut strawberries into ¼-inch-thick slices. Place in a large bowl and sprinkle with 2–4 tablespoons sugar (depending on how sweet your strawberries are). Mix well and set aside at room temperature for about 20 minutes.

3. To make biscuits, stir Bisquick, melted butter, milk, and 1½ tablespoons sugar together in a mixing bowl until a soft dough forms. Drop by 3 spoonfuls onto a greased cookie sheet. Bake 10 minutes or until golden brown.

4. Whip the cream to soft peaks in a cold bowl, adding a teaspoon of sugar and a drop of vanilla.

5. Break up each biscuit into a bowl, spoon strawberries over it, and top with a dollop of whipped cream.

Serves: 3
Time: 30 minutes

MINI-MEATBALL SOUP

I don't intend to make this into some kind of Rachael Ray fanblog, but here’s yet another great recipe from her. It’s just that I wanted to make soup to go with my No-Knead bread on Easter, and I’m yearning for an immersion blender so much, I refuse to make any more pureed soups until I acquire one. (Update: THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU to A’s mother, who bought me a Cuisinart SmartStick for my birthday; it’s currently winging its way to me from Amazon, and I’m already pondering what kind of pureed soup to make first.) That didn’t leave many options in my recipe archive, so I happened to turn to my copy of RR’s 30-Minute Meals, where I happened to have bookmarked this recipe. I had some oldish ground beef in the freezer that needed to be used up, and just the right amount of homemade chicken stock left over after making risotto, and some egg noodles taking up too much space in the cupboard (RR called for ditalini, but I figured I could break up the egg noodles into smaller pieces), so it felt like destiny.

Verdict: The recipe was super-easy. And it was tasty, like chicken noodle soup crossed with meatloaf—two comfort foods in one! Besides the egg-noodle substitution, I didn’t make many changes to the recipe. RR had asked for “Italian breadcrumbs,” which I’m guessing meant store-bought, flavored ones; I improved on that by crumbling up my own fresh crumbs from an old baguette and adding dried oregano and basil to the meatballs.

Yet again, however, I’ve noticed that the version of this recipe posted online at the Food Network site is significantly different than the one in my book. I can only conclude that with her huge media success, RR (or her Food Network handlers) retooled her earlier recipes to be a little fancier. The online recipe had a few improvements I’d like to incorporate next time: it called for more vegetables (2 carrots and 2 celery instead of 1 of each; I split the difference in my typed version below and said 1–2) and had some spinach added at the end, which would be yummy, more colorful, and more healthful too. I’ve made it optional in my version. The other differences, though, seemed silly. The Food Network version asks for mixed beef, pork, and veal for the meatballs, which just adds unnecessary complication to a simple homestyle dish. And for some reason the FN version has you cook the meatballs by boiling them in the soup, rather than browning them in a pan. I suppose that might save a little time, but I can’t believe it would help the flavor; the taste of browned meat is an important component here. Even in the professionally styled photograph that accompanies the online recipe, the meatballs look pale and gray and soggy. Blecch! Do yourself a favor and pan-brown them (which, it seems to me, also lets you render and drain away some of the beef fat instead of dumping it all into the soup).

1 pound lean ground beef
1 egg
½ cup plain fresh breadcrumbs
⅓ cup grated Parmesan cheese
1 teaspoon garlic powder
½ teaspoon dried oregano
½ teaspoon dried basil
½ medium onion, chopped, plus ¼ onion, minced
salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
1–2 carrots, chopped
1–2 stalks celery, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 pinches ground nutmeg
6 cups chicken broth
½ cup ditalini or small egg noodles
1 handful chopped Italian parsley
a few handfuls chopped fresh spinach (optional)

1. In a large bowl, combine beef, egg, breadcrumbs, Parmesan, garlic powder, oregano, basil, minced onion, and salt and pepper to taste. Mix well with your hands. Form into ½-inch balls (I used a teaspoon measuring spoon to help me gauge the right amount to scoop up) and place in a nonstick skillet. Cook over medium or medium-high heat until browned, shaking pan every few minutes to brown evenly.

2. While meatballs are cooking, heat olive oil in a large soup pot over medium heat. Add carrot, celery, chopped onion, and garlic; sprinkle vegetables with nutmeg, salt, and pepper and cook 5 minutes. Add broth and turn heat up to high. When broth boils, drop in noodles and reduce heat to simmer. Cook 8–10 minutes, until pasta is al dente.

3. Drop in meatballs and parsley. Add spinach if desired, and cook until it wilts.

Serves: 4
Time: 30 minutes

NO-KNEAD BREAD

Sheesh, I’m behind with this posting stuff. I made this bread on Easter. Which turned out to be apt timing, since the recipe is indeed miraculous. The Web has been abuzz about it ever since it was written up in The New York Times in November, and now my mom’s raving about it too. The ingredients are minimal—just flour, a bizarrely tiny bit of yeast, salt, and water—and the process nontraditional, but boy howdy, does it work like a charm. Even for me, impatient nonbaker with substandard cookware that I am, it yielded beautiful, bakery-quality loaves of bread, moist and chewy within (with “a nice crumb,” as the foodies say) and crackly-crisp without. As they sat all golden and bubbly on their cooling racks, I kept staring at them in awe and disbelief. I made that!

The recipe requires a long span of time, but the actual work involved is minimal. I mixed up the ingredients on Saturday night and let the dough rest until early afternoon on Sunday, which worked perfectly: I had bread by dinnertime. Though a little twisty, the directions were essentially easy to follow, and my slight variations in technique didn’t seem to cause any problems. The original recipe calls for ¼ teaspoon instant yeast, but through Internet commentary I learned that 1/3 teaspoon regular yeast will work just as well, so that’s what I used. The original also asks you to set the dough on a well-floured cotton towel to rise, but both Internet commentary and common sense suggested to me that that’s just silly—setting wet, sticky dough on a cotton towel, no matter how well-floured, is just going to result in a messed-up towel, and is not going to be particularly convenient when your sticky dough clings to said towel as you’re trying to ease it into a 450-degree baking dish. I used plastic wrap instead, which proved really helpful as a vehicle for picking up the dough and flipping it into the dish.

My biggest concern was that I didn’t have anything approaching a 6- to 8-quart heavy covered oven-safe pot. All I had was a 2-quart Corelle baking dish with a Pyrex lid. But the magical bread didn’t let me down. I divided the dough in half at the end of Step 2, let both halves rise two hours, cooked them in succession, and voila, I got two perfect smallish loaves. You gotta try this!

3 cups all-purpose or bread flour, plus more for dusting
¼ teaspoon instant yeast or ⅓ teaspoon regular (active dry) yeast
1¼ teaspoons salt
Cornmeal or wheat bran as needed

1. In a large bowl, combine flour (measure by dipping, not spooning), yeast, and salt. Add 1⅝ cups water and stir until blended; dough will be shaggy and sticky. Cover bowl with plastic wrap. Let dough rest at least 12 hours, preferably about 18, at warm room temperature, about 70 degrees.

2. Dough is ready when its surface is dotted with bubbles. Lightly flour a work surface and place dough on it; sprinkle it with a little more flour and fold it over on itself once or twice. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rest about 15 minutes.

3. Using just enough flour to keep dough from sticking to work surface or to your fingers, gently and quickly shape dough into a ball. Place a piece of plastic wrap at the bottom of a large bowl, dust with flour, wheat bran, or cornmeal, and put dough seam side down on plastic wrap. Dust with more flour, bran or cornmeal. Cover bowl with a cotton towel and let rise for about 2 hours. When it is ready, dough will be more than double in size and will not readily spring back when poked with a finger.

4. At least a half-hour before dough is ready, heat oven to 450 degrees. Put a 6- to 8-quart heavy covered pot (cast iron, enamel, Pyrex or ceramic) in oven as it heats. When dough is ready, carefully remove pot from oven. Holding edges of plastic wrap, lift dough out of bowl and turn over into pot, seam side up; it may look like a mess, but that’s OK. Shake pan once or twice if dough is unevenly distributed; it will straighten out as it bakes. Cover with lid and bake 20-30 minutes, then remove lid and bake another 15 to 30 minutes, until loaf is beautifully browned. Cool on a rack.

Yield: one 1½-pound loaf
Time: 21 hours (only about 1 hour actual work)

LEMON RISOTTO WITH ASPARAGUS AND PEAS

May 2008 note: This photo shows an all-asparagus, no-pea version. I had a whole bunch of fresh asparagus this time, so I used it all--probably about 2 cups.

A has always claimed, with a little shudder, that he doesn’t like risotto. While I’ve never been a voracious risotto eater (given the choice between rice and noodles, I’ll choose noodles every time), I do have a few recipes in my vault. I like the creaminess of risotto, and its versatility—like pasta, you can dress it up with every vegetable and herb and meat and flavoring under the sun. Ever since I moved in with A, I’ve been reduced to making risotto only when he leaves town. This one I found last summer in an old issue of Martha Stewart Living that had been jettisoned in the office lunchroom. It looked so springy, velvety-white flecked with green and yellow, I couldn’t resist tearing it out and making it while A was in Indiana over the Fourth of July. It was good, but ever since then it’s been back in the vault.

Now spring is springing and I’m buying asparagus at the farmers’ market every single week and eating it every which way I can, and with a craving for lemony, cheesy, asparagus risotto, I announced to A that I’d be making it for dinner whether he liked it or not. I bet him he would like it, and I was right. When we finished eating, he pushed back his plate with a bemused expression on his face and admitted, “Maybe I’ve never had risotto before. Maybe when I said I didn’t like it, I was thinking of something different.” I didn’t know whether to laugh or sock him in the arm. All this time I’ve been avoiding making risotto for no reason? Ha! Henceforth, let the floodgates of risotto recipes be opened!

Making risotto is hard for me, because it requires a lot of patience. Often I’ve followed a recipe to the letter and then bitten into underdone rice. Those recipes were probably flawed, but I should have used my powers of sensory observation while I was cooking instead of just blindly, impatiently following the directions. After much trial and error, I can finally recognize the texture of properly done risotto, and I know it always takes longer than I think it will. I like this recipe because it calls for a generous amount of broth. I think my cooking time far exceeded Martha’s oddly precise estimates (I love the part that says, “It should take about 13 minutes”), but the quantity of broth was right on, and having to wait for all 6 cups of it to be absorbed helped me slow down and give the rice the time it needed. I was a bit handicapped by the fact that I was practically cooking in the dark—the light bulb above the stove had chosen that day to burn out, and of course we had no spares on hand—but the risotto turned out perfectly, maybe the best version I’ve made.

No edits to the recipe, except that I only used ½ cup of peas. A hates them, so my neat solution was to cook the risotto without them, dish up half of it into his bowl and a storage container, and then add the peas (thawed in the microwave) to the remaining two servings for me. I probably used more than 6 asparagus spears—just however many were in the bunch I got at the market. Of course, I used homemade stock, which I strongly recommend for a recipe that draws so much of its flavor from the broth.

6 cups homemade or low-sodium store-bought chicken stock
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 small onion, finely chopped
1 cup Arborio rice
½ cup dry white wine
6 thin asparagus spears, trimmed and cut into 1-inch lengths
1 cup thawed frozen peas
1 teaspoon finely grated lemon zest
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 cup chopped flat-leaf parsley
½ cup finely grated Parmesan cheese, plus more for serving
salt and freshly ground pepper

1. Bring stock to a boil in a medium saucepan; turn off heat.

2. Melt 2 tablespoons butter over medium heat in another medium saucepan. Add onion; cook, stirring constantly, until translucent, 6–7 minutes. Add rice; cook, stirring constantly, until edges of grains are translucent, 2–3 minutes. Raise heat to medium-high. Add wine; cook, stirring constantly, until wine has completely evaporated.

3. Add ½ cup stock; cook, stirring constantly, until stock has been completely absorbed and a wooden spoon drawn through rice leaves a trail in its wake. Continue adding about 4 more cups stock, ½ cup at a time, waiting for each addition to be absorbed before adding the next. (It should take about 13 minutes.)

4. Stir in the asparagus. Add ½ to 1 cup more stock, in the same manner as described above. About 1 minute before risotto is done, stir in the peas. Risotto is done when liquid looks creamy and grains are cooked but still slightly firm in the centers. (The total cooking time will be 16–20 minutes.)

5. Remove from heat; stir in ½ cup stock. (You may have stock left over.) Stir in zest, juice, remaining 2 tablespoons butter, parsley, and cheese. Season with salt and pepper, and serve with more cheese.

Serves: 4
Time: 45 minutes

BREAKFAST FOR DINNER: EGGS AND HASH

Postscript, May 2008: Since I first made this recipe, I've discovered that an even easier method of making Breakfast For Dinner is just to break a few eggs over the hash when it's done browning, cover the pan, and cook until the eggs are done. I don't like runny yolks, particularly atop my nice crispy potatoes, so I pierce the yolks with a fork midway through the egg-cooking to let them run out and gently solidify (as you can see in the photo above). You could try to leave the eggs whole and intact atop the hash for a prettier effect when you serve it, but I usually give the whole thing a stir near the end, so that the final result is sort of a cross between a fried egg and a scramble. Anyway, I highly recommend adding eggs to your hash: it's both delicious and efficient, and in the true lazy spirit of Breakfast For Dinner, you end up with just a single pan to wash.

For the last couple of weeks, I have been craving breakfast food. Creamy eggs, buttery toast, waffles topped with fresh fruit, a colorful vegetable-studded frittata…excuse me while I wipe my drool off the keyboard. There can be something so wholesome and comforting about breakfast foods. Ironically, though, I’m a minimalist breakfast eater. I insist upon having it every single day, but all my life, a nice bowl of cereal (or granola or oatmeal), milk, and orange juice has been all I require. In fact, more complicated foods in the early morning make me feel a little queasy—and don’t even get me started on the non-breakfast foods some people claim to enjoy in the morning, like pork chops or cold pizza. In particular, I’m not a fan of the myriad sweet breakfast options—the coffee cakes, the doughnuts and other pastries, the syrup-drenched pancakes and sugar-crusted French toast. Why do so many breakfast foods look like desserts? I suppose a sugar rush is one way to get jump-started in the morning, but it usually just makes me feel ill.

I’m a devotee of brunch, though strictly in restaurants. I rarely feel like cooking (and worse, messing up the kitchen) in the morning. What I like best is Breakfast For Dinner. It reminds me a little bit of being a child (when my mom worked nights and my dad was in charge, he often made pancakes, French toast, or scrambled eggs for supper), a little bit of being an invalid (something about the cozy, easy-to-make, buttery-and-bland quality of many breakfast foods), and a little bit of being rebellious—so daring, mixing up the meals like that! It’s the ultimate in light-meal, use-up-whatever’s-in-the-fridge, I-don’t-feel-like-cooking cuisine, best eaten in one’s pajamas in front of the TV.

So on Saturday night I channeled all my breakfast-food cravings into creating an awesome Breakfast For Dinner. I had a bunch of ham left over from making fritters last week, and what better way to use it up than to make a hearty ham-and-potato hash (recipe adapted from Simply Recipes)? Thanks to the Internet, I also managed to reconstruct a recipe for scrambled eggs with cream cheese and scallions that I often used to make myself for dinner back when I lived alone (swingin’ bachelor lifestyle = eggs and toast for supper whenever you please). On the side, I served buttered toast made from Trader Joe’s cinnamon-swirl bread, and gigantic fresh strawberries from the farmers’ market.

Everything was easy to make and turned out deliciously. The hash was particularly pleasing, with enough left over for my lunch the next day. You could really experiment with putting just about anything you want in the hash—scallions instead of plain onion, sage or chives instead of thyme, other veggies, cheese on top—though I liked it as is. The scrambled eggs tasted like what I remembered, but they had a perplexing custard-like texture that persisted even after I cooked them way longer than the recipe called for. I like my eggs soft and fluffy, but this was nearly overkill. I don’t know if my technique was bad (I hadn’t scrambled an egg in years) or if it was just the amount of cream cheese. The recipe called for 2 ounces, and I’d cut back on that next time. I want enough cream cheese to keep the eggs moist, but it shouldn’t otherwise make its presence known. Breakfast For Dinner is about comfort, not decadence.

SCRAMBLED EGGS WITH CREAM CHEESE AND SCALLIONS

4 scallions, finely chopped
1 tablespoon butter
4 large eggs
1–2 ounces cream cheese, cut into bits and softened
salt and pepper to taste

1. In a small nonstick skillet, melt the butter over medium-low heat. Add the scallions and cook, stirring, until soft.

2. In a large bowl, whisk together the eggs, the cream cheese, and salt and pepper to taste. Pour the egg mixture into the skillet with the scallions. Raise the heat to medium and cook, stirring, 3–4 minutes or until cooked through.

Serves: 2
Time: 15 minutes

HAM AND POTATO HASH

2 tablespoons butter
1 small onion, finely chopped
1 small red bell pepper, finely chopped
2 small baking potatoes
¾ cup finely diced cooked ham
salt and pepper to taste
fresh thyme to taste

1. Bring a medium pot of water to a boil. Scrub the potatoes, cut them in half, and cook them in the water until almost done but still firm, about 10 minutes. Rinse in cold water to stop cooking. Drain. Dice into ½-inch-thick pieces.

2. Melt butter in a large skillet over medium heat. Add onion and cook until softened, about 4 minutes. Add the chopped bell pepper and cook another 2 minutes.

3. Add diced potatoes, ham, salt, pepper, and thyme; mix well. Cook hash until well browned, about 10–15 minutes, stirring occasionally. Serve with eggs and toast.

Serves: 2–3
Time: 30 minutes

BLANCS DE VOILAILLE AUX CHAMPIGNONS DE PARIS

(Chicken Breasts With Mushrooms)


I’ve made this a few times before but always forgot to post it. It’s from Bistro Chicken by Mary Ellen Evans, my source for easy Frenchy sophistication. Like her other recipes, this one sounds, looks, and tastes elegant but is no trouble at all to make. You get to do fun chef things like deglaze the pan with wine and reduce the liquid to make a pan sauce, so you can pretend it requires flair and savoir-faire to make it, but at heart it’s quite sensible and unfussy and relatively foolproof. The only changes I made were to use brown mushrooms because I like them better, and to leave out the tarragon because I have yet to be thrilled enough by tarragon in my life to warrant paying $2.50 for it at the grocery store. Everything went smoothly, though I think I could have reduced the sauce a bit more at the end; it was too runny. But tasty, so who cares? This recipe doesn’t send me over the moon—there’s a nice blend of subtle flavors and all, but essentially it’s just chicken in dressed-up cream-of-mushroom sauce. But with a green salad it’s a good, reliable, civilized Tuesday night dinner, which is all I need sometimes.

2 tablespoons canola oil
2 tablespoons salted butter
8 ounces white button mushrooms, quartered
¼ cup minced shallots
4 (6-to-8-ounce) boneless, skinless chicken breasts
* If breasts are large, use 2 and cut each in half horizontally to make 4
¼ teaspoon salt
⅛ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
½ cup chicken broth
½ cup white wine
½ cup half-and-half
1 tablespoon chopped fresh chives
1 tablespoon chopped fresh tarragon
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley

1. Heat the oil and butter in a large skillet over medium heat. When it sizzles, add the mushrooms and shallots. Sauté until just beginning to soften, 2–3 minutes.

2. Season chicken with salt and pepper. Push mushrooms to the edges of the skillet and add the chicken in the middle. Sauté until golden brown on both sides, 3–4 minutes per side.

3. Reduce heat to low; add broth and wine. Cover; cook, turning once, until chicken is no longer pink in the thickest part when cut with a knife, 4–5 minutes per side. Remove chicken to a serving platter and cover with foil to keep warm.

4. Whisk the half-and-half into the skillet; increase heat to high and cook to reduce and thicken slightly, 2–3 minutes.

5. Meanwhile, finely chop the herbs. Pour the reduced sauce over the chicken, sprinkle with the chopped herbs, and serve.

Serves: 4
Time: 30 minutes

PENNE WITH TOMATO-VODKA-CREAM SAUCE

Well, chalk up another big yum to Rachael Ray. When I returned home on Monday after a delightful vacation in Joshua Tree with my parents and A, I had just enough time to do my week’s grocery shopping before dinner. Since we’d missed the Saturday farmers’ market, I hastily tore through my cookbooks looking for recipes that could be made without the benefit of awesome fresh produce. We’re getting so spoiled by the farmers’ market’s bounty—not to mention the warm fuzzy feeling of buying locally grown, often organic, food directly from the growers—that we shy away from inferior supermarket produce (except for things like mushrooms that the farmers’ market doesn’t carry). This didn’t leave me with many options for a pasta dish. Tomato sauce sounded nice, but it turns out I have just two pasta recipes that don’t employ fresh tomatoes, and I’d made both of them recently.

Then I remembered RR’s cringeworthily titled “You-Won’t-Be-Single-For-Long Vodka Cream Pasta” (ah, see, this is the kind of cutesyness that makes people hate her), which had received a glowing review from the Smitten Kitchen and which, conveniently, is included in the RR 30-Minute Meals cookbook I happen to own. I like vodka, I like cream—why not give it a shot?

Interestingly, it turns out that the recipe posted on the Food Network site and used by the Smitten Kitchen is different than the one in my cookbook. It’s less stripped-down, with different proportions, some extra ingredients (butter, shallots, and chicken stock) and some rearrangement of the steps (adding the vodka earlier, for one thing). Most importantly, it actually calls for the traditional penne, whereas the original called for, oddly, linguine (and I’ve seen Penne alla Vodka on restaurant menus a lot more than I’ve seen Linguine alla Vodka). I’m pretty sure that the cookbook I have is RR’s very first book, so I get the feeling that maybe she’d gained some more experience and honed her skills by the time the Food Network recipe was posted—and consequently decided to make it a little more complex and (I was willing to bet) also tastier. Since I happened to have shallots on hand, for the chicken recipe I was planning to make the next night, and just enough homemade chicken stock in the freezer, I forged ahead with the Internet version.

Verdict: This pasta is dee-licious and a cinch to make. We grated a little Parmesan on top of each serving, because we love dairy overload. A gives it his stamp of approval, too. I could tell he was a little weirded out by the idea of putting vodka in tomato sauce, but as soon as he took a bite and realized it didn’t taste like vodka per se, but rather like something ineffably above and beyond just plain tomato sauce, he was pleased. Since RR’s intro to the recipe promised that when you feed this pasta to the one you love, “he or she will be yours,” I watched A carefully to try to gauge any increase (As if it were possible for me to love you even more! he now interjects) in his level of devotion to me. I hoped the magical You-Won’t-Be-Single-for-Long Sauce might at least inspire him to do the dishes immediately after dinner, instead of waiting until the next day. But he just looked happy to be fed, as always. And then he fetched me some Jo-Jos (the superior Trader Joe’s version of Oreos, with which I am currently obsessed) out of the cupboard and we spent a sated evening with cats on our laps watching 24. And that is about all the happiness I require from a pasta sauce, thank you very much.

1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon butter
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 shallots, minced
1 cup vodka
1 cup chicken stock
1 can crushed or diced tomatoes (28–32 ounces)
salt and pepper to taste
1 pound ounces penne pasta
½ cup heavy cream
20 leaves fresh basil, shredded or torn

1. Heat oil and butter in a large skillet over medium heat. Add garlic and shallots, and gently sauté for 3–5 minutes. Add vodka to the pan and reduce by half. Add chicken stock and tomatoes. Bring sauce to a boil and reduce heat to simmer. Season with salt and pepper.

2. While sauce simmers, cook pasta in salted boiling water until al dente.

3. When enough liquid has cooked away from the sauce and pasta is almost done, stir cream into sauce. When sauce returns to a boil, remove it from heat. Drain pasta and toss with sauce and basil leaves.

Serves: 6
Time: 30–40 minutes

MACARONI AND CHEESE!

Hell yeah.

I’ve always thought of myself as a macaroni and cheese lover. Between the ages of, say, 14 and 20, I was a box-a-week Kraftoholic. It took many years for me to notice that it doesn’t really taste like cheese, but as soon as I did, there was no going back. I was slow to find a replacement, though. In the decade since, I’ve mainly made do with restaurant fare—if there is mac and cheese on a menu, I will order it. (Favorites include Hugo’s cheddar-Gorgonzola-Parmesan mac and cheese, Noodles & Company’s Wisconsin Mac & Cheese with spinach and tomatoes—Noodles, if you’re listening, please open a restaurant in Pasadena, OK?—and, in a pinch, the more synthetic creamy mac and cheese at Souplantation.) Attempts to create mac and cheese at home, however, have been sporadic and disappointing. When I started cooking more seriously post-college, I checked out an entire book of mac and cheese recipes from the library, but the few recipes I tried were unsatisfying. In the past year or so, I’ve taken solace in the America’s Test Kitchen recipe, which is pretty decent, but always failed to inspire in me the same ecstasy I remembered feeling for the more memorable mac and cheeses of my life. I tried to rationalize (check out the warning signs of disillusionment in the above posting--"it may not be what my inner child is crying out for," "I would not say I have perfected this recipe yet"). Maybe this was just what you got with homemade mac and cheese. Or maybe I just didn’t like mac and cheese quite as much as I thought I did.

The “Eureka!” moment came last December, as I was reading The Best Food Writing 2006, which contains an essay by Julia Moskin from the New York Times entitled “Macaroni and Lots of Cheese”. In it, Moskin boldly posits that the solution to mac-and-cheese malaise is just…more cheese. What struck me were the following quotations from author John Thorne:

“A good dish of macaroni and cheese is hard to find these days. The recipes in most cookbooks are not to be trusted...usually it is their vexatious infatuation with white sauce, a noxious paste of flour-thickened milk, for this dish flavored with a tiny grating of cheese. Contrary to popular belief, this is not macaroni and cheese but macaroni with cheese sauce. It is awful stuff and every cookbook in which it appears should be thrown out the window.”

“Starting at about the turn of the 20th century, there was a huge fashion for white sauce in America—chafing-dish stuff like chicken à la king, or creamed onions. They were cheap and seemed elegant, and their legacy is that people choose ‘creamy’ over everything else. But I maintain that macaroni and cheese should be primarily cheesy.”

While I’m not sure I’d go so far as to call white sauce “noxious,” I was aware of its inglorious history from reading Laura Shapiro’s Perfection Salad, and I’d long suspected that perhaps it was white sauce that seemed to make my homemade mac and cheeses so bland and gummy. Macaroni with cheese sauce was exactly it—sometimes I could almost taste the flour, particularly in the leftovers. The notion of a better way intrigued me, and I hastily copied down the two recipes included in Moskin’s article. Then I promptly forgot about them.

Lately I’ve been reading more food blogs, and it turns out Moskin’s article was pretty heavily debated in the blogosphere. Most responses I read remained faithful to the traditional white-sauce version of mac and cheese; a few had tried Moskin’s more hard-core cheesy recipe (basically just macaroni, butter, a little milk, and a whopping 1½ pounds of cheese) and pronounced it “gross.” Those who had tried her second recipe, however, including The Smitten Kitchen, were enthusiastic.

You can now include me in those ranks. The recipe sounds a little weird (pureed cottage cheese? a pound of cheddar? uncooked noodles?), but it works beautifully. The cottage cheese-milk mixture provides a creamy binding agent without resorting to flour. The pound of cheddar is enough to envelop the noodles without being too overwhelming. The noodles cook perfectly, absorbing the milk and the cheese flavor while saving you time and dishwashing. This recipe couldn’t be easier: dump ingredients in a dish and bake. And any doubtful visions I had of crunchy raw noodles or oily clumps of cheese were dispelled when I drew the bubbling, rich-smelling, perfectly browned dish from the oven. It was macaroni with baked cheese, and it was perfect—chewy but not dry, creamy but not saucy, toastily crusty on top and bottom. I’ll admit it gets slightly greasier when the leftovers are reheated, but it retains its cheesy flavor and pleasant texture; I enjoyed it nearly as much today at lunch as I did when I made it on Monday night. This is my ideal mac and cheese—if only it weren’t so decadent so I could feel justified in eating it more often.

A looked slightly alarmed when I took one bite and then declared that now that I’ve found this macaroni and cheese, my life is complete. But when the bowls were empty (and we had dutifully eaten big green salads to keep our arteries clear) and I said, “I’m throwing my old macaroni and cheese recipe away right now. I don’t need it anymore,” he didn’t argue. He was happy; his mouth was full of cheese.

2 tablespoons butter
1 cup cottage cheese
2 cups milk
1 teaspoon dry mustard
½ teaspoon salt
freshly ground black pepper to taste
1 pound sharp cheddar cheese, grated
½ pound elbow macaroni

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees and position an oven rack in the upper third of the oven. Use 1 tablespoon butter to butter a 9-inch round or square baking dish.

2. In a blender, puree cottage cheese, mustard, and salt and pepper until smooth. Add milk and puree until well blended.

3. Reserve ¼ cup grated cheese for topping. In the prepared baking dish, toss together the uncooked pasta and the remainder of the grated cheese. Pour the milk mixture over it and stir well. Cover tightly with foil and bake 30 minutes.

4. Remove foil, stir gently, sprinkle with reserved cheese, and dot with remaining tablespoon butter. Bake, uncovered, 30 minutes more, until browned. Let cool 15 minutes before serving.

Serves: 4–6
Time: 1½ hours, mostly baking time

ISRAELI SPICE CHICKEN WITH TOMATO RELISH

While there are certain cookbook authors whose recipes I have come to trust and love (Jack Bishop for vegetables, Carole Walters for cookies), and boy do I love to watch cooking shows on PBS on Saturday afternoons while I’m dusting the living room, I’ve never been drawn into the celebrity chef phenomenon. Maybe if I had cable and could become addicted to the Food Network, I’d be singing a different tune, but for now I don’t know my Alton from my Emeril, and what’s more, I don’t really care. Thus, I’m not sure I’ve been fully exposed to the perky, all-pervasive annoyance of Rachael Ray. Sure, I know about the whole sexy-photos-in-FHM kerfuffle, I’ve heard the “EVOO” catchphrase, and I’ve noticed her showing up on my Wheat Thins boxes for some time now. But I’ve never seen her talking and cooking on TV, and if her mannerisms are really as grating as some people seem to find them, I apologize for the following defense of Rachael Ray.

Foodies (I use the word derisively, like “hipsters”) love to bash Rachael Ray. I suppose it was from them that I absorbed the general impression that her cooking is lowbrow. I can’t believe I bought into this, considering I’m a pretty lowbrow cooker myself; I’m scared of all the really gourmet foods, like offal and truffles and fava beans, and I’m too poor or too frugal to buy the fanciest ingredients and kitchen tools, and everything I really like is just one form or another of comfort food. But I can be snobby about certain things (making as much from scratch as possible, using fresh ingredients, and avoiding prepacked convenience foods), and I guess I assumed Rachael Ray was one of those people who write lame “quick and easy” recipes that make me a little sad, calling for bottled garlic and touting their ability to make food with six ingredients or fewer. Then I got Ray’s original 30-Minute Meals book for Christmas. I didn’t have high hopes for it, but that changed once I started paging through it. Sure, it wasn’t the style of cookbook I would buy for myself. But you know? A lot of the stuff sounded appealing, and soon I was folding over some page corners.

Because here’s the thing I respect: Rachael Ray wants you to cook good, fresh, reasonably healthy food, on weeknights after a long day of work even, and she doesn’t want you to be scared and uptight about it. She wants you to know that when you get ready to sauté something, you don’t have to carefully measure out your olive oil with white knuckles; you can just open the bottle and turn it over and twirl it “once around the pan” or “twice around the pan” like the pros do. You can measure spices with pinches and palmfuls and nothing bad will happen to you. For a lot of cooks, this is common sense, but I’ve met a lot of people who seem petrified of cooking and are convinced they’re not good at it, and they need someone fun and friendly to convince them that making home-cooked food is no big deal. Rachael Ray wants to make cooking part of your life, but it doesn’t need to become your life, or even a hobby. What’s more, the recipes don’t sacrifice flavor in favor of simplicity; they’re easy and straightforward without being bland or lazy or prefab the way so many things geared at non-cooks seem to be. It’s bourgeois cuisine and there’s nothing wrong with that. It tastes good and it doesn’t come from a can.

Case in point: this recipe from Ray’s second 30-Minute Meals book, which is packed with zesty, complex flavor and still a cinch to pull together. It comes to me courtesy of Editor A, who generously cooked it for me and Editor M and brought it to one of our habitual Friday lunches in which we all sit around and pretend we’re still coworkers (A and M left my company for greener pastures late last year). I was impressed by the chicken, wolfed down several pitas full, and resolved to make it myself as soon as possible. When I did so, on Monday night, it turned out just as well, with not too much effort on my part: mix up the spice rub and slather it on chicken, mix up the tomato relish, grill the chicken in the George Foreman, tear it up, throw everything into pitas. I even made a side dish of sautéed zucchini with garlic and mint, which Ray included in her original recipe, but I’m not bothering to include it here because although perfectly tasty and acceptable, it definitely was not the main event, nor was it really needed to make a satisfying meal. You can hunt it down on Epicurious if you must. We ate, I was pleased, A was enthusiastic, Rachael Ray was vindicated.

I’m not saying I’m going to become a huge Rachael Ray fan or anything, or go out of my way to seek out more of her recipes, or champion her to everyone I meet, or even ever mention her again on my blog. But I don’t think she’s so bad*, and I’m definitely a fan of this chicken, and I think you should make it.

*I could sure live without her cutesy use of the word "glug" as a unit of liquid measurement, though.

Israeli spice rub:
1½ tablespoons sweet paprika
1½ tablespoons ground cumin
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon ground coriander
½ teaspoon red pepper flakes
1½ teaspoons coarse kosher salt

Tomato relish:
3 small ripe red tomatoes
2 orange or yellow tomatoes
1 small sweet onion, thinly sliced
½ cup flat-leaf parsley leaves, chopped
3 tablespoons olive oil
juice of 1 lemon
½ teaspoon ground cumin
½ teaspoon ground coriander
½ teaspoon red pepper flakes
salt

4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts (1½ to 2 pounds)
olive oil
pocket pita bread

1. Combine the spice rub ingredients in a bowl.

2. Cut each chicken breast in half horizontally to form a total of 8 thin filets. Place chicken in a shallow dish and drizzle with olive oil to barely coat the meat. Rub chicken liberally on all sides with 4 tablespoons of the spice blend. Let stand 10 minutes.

3. While chicken is marinating, seed and chop the tomatoes and combine them with the onion and parsley in a medium bowl. Combine oil, lemon juice, cumin, coriander, and red pepper flakes in a small jar with a lid. Shake dressing to mix, and pour over salad. Season with salt to taste and toss well. Let stand 10 minutes.

4. Grill chicken 6–7 minutes on each side or until juices run clear. (I believe Editor A said she sautés hers in a pan with a little oil, so give that a shot if you don’t have a grill.) When cool enough to handle, shred chicken into small pieces.

5. To serve, pile chicken and tomato relish in warmed pita pockets.

Serves: 4
Time: Well, maybe not 30 minutes unless you move very quickly, but under an hour anyway

KOFTE

Kofte! Another fun-to-say food word to add to my repertoire (along with such favorites as “kebab,” “cassoulet,” “pistou,” and “fritter”). I had never heard of these Turkish meatballs before Cooking Light thoughtfully introduced me to them, and I’m not saying these are necessarily the most authentic version, but who cares? This recipe is incredibly quick and easy (“superfast,” in Cooking Light-speak), wholesome, and quite flavorful but still straightforward—think interestingly spiced meatloaf in a pita. I’m a little wary of fresh mint—it’s just so strong—and held back a bit from the full ¼ cup when I made these on Wednesday night, but the mint turned out to be the big bright note that makes the flavor so interesting (though the undertones of cinnamon and allspice did good work, too). Next time, I’ll add all the mint without fear.

The main change I made was to grill the meat on my George Foreman rather than broiling it. The practical reason for this was that our broiler doesn’t work anymore. But also, the introductory notes to the recipe mentioned that kofte are “often grilled,” so grilling sounded almost called-for to me. I also added some diced cucumber to the plain yogurt sauce, because cucumbers and yogurt go together like ramma lamma lamma ka dinga da dinga dong, in the immortal words of Grease.

On the side, I made smash-fried potatoes, in a blind attempt to replicate the toothsome-looking ones I’d seen in a Martha Stewart magazine a few months back, the recipe for which Martha has somehow neglected to post to her site, as far as I can tell. Trying to reconstruct the process from memory, I boiled small yellow potatoes whole, drained them, gently smashed each one into a disk, and then pan-fried the disks (like fritters!) in a little olive oil with minced garlic and dried oregano. I think they would have turned out perfectly, except I didn’t let the potatoes boil quite long enough, so they splintered apart when I smashed them instead of staying in neat little cakes. What resulted was more like hash browns than I would have liked, but they were still delicious hash browns. I fully intend to persevere in my quest for the ideal smash-fried potato, but not with the kofte. Until I got midway through the recipe, I hadn’t realized that one serving involved two kofte, which, though not a heavy meal (it’s Cooking Light, remember), is substantial enough. In the future, I think a green salad on the side will be fine.

½ cup chopped white onion
⅓ cup dry breadcrumbs (I used panko)
¼ cup chopped fresh mint
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 teaspoon minced garlic
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon ground cumin
¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon
¼ teaspoon ground red pepper
⅛ teaspoon ground allspice
1 pound lean ground beef
1 large egg white, lightly beaten
2 plum tomatoes, sliced into 8 (¼-inch-thick) slices
4 (6-inch) pita pocket breads, cut in half
¼–½ cup plain yogurt
Optional: 1 small cucumber, diced
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

1. Preheat broiler or prepare a grill.

2. Combine first 12 ingredients (through egg white) in a large bowl; mix with fingers until combined. Divide mixture into 8 equal portions; shape each portion into a 2-inch patty.

3. Place patties on a baking sheet coated with cooking spray and broil 4 minutes on each side, or grill patties to desired degree of doneness.

4. If desired, mix diced cucumber into yogurt in a small bowl and season with salt and pepper to taste.

5. Place 1 tomato slice and 1 patty in each pita half; top with yogurt sauce.

Serves: 4 (2 filled pita halves per person)
Time: 30 minutes

INDIAN-SPICED VEGETABLE FRITTERS WITH CURRY-LIME YOGURT

So, did I mention how much I love fritters? Oh yes. If this mania keeps up, I’m going to have to make “fritters” its own recipe category in the sidebar.

This recipe is from my new fave site The Smitten Kitchen. The original description, accompanied by mouthwatering photos, is here. My own, sadly less gorgeously illustrated, commentary has little to add. Everything went smoothly when I made these last Thursday night. When I tried to grate the onion on my sturdy but cheap grater (which I believe I bought using leftover food-service points at the little convenience store in my college cafeteria 10 years ago), the onion dissolved into goo, so I minced it finely with a knife—and added a note to the recipe reminding myself to do this next time. My only other changes were to divide the quantities in half (the original recipe promised to make 24 fritters, which seemed overwhelming—my halved version made 8 slightly larger ones, just the right amount for supper for A and me) and to eliminate the step of keeping the finished fritters warm in the oven while the others are frying. It’s a nice thought and all, but since the halved recipe makes just two frying batches, it didn’t seem that necessary. A wasn’t enthused at the thought of washing a baking sheet, and besides, lukewarm fritters are easier to eat at ravenous speed.

These are definitely the most loosely constructed fritters in my recipe repertoire—on the opposite end of the spectrum from the pancake-like zucchini, ham, and ricotta fritters of a few weeks ago. Getting the vegetable pieces to hang together in cakes was in fact a bit of a challenge, especially when I started getting impatient with the second batch(my number-one flaw as a cook—I’m just too hungry!) and flipping them over in the pan too early, creating an interesting fritter-hash in some cases. This is not really a problem for me, though. No matter what shape they ended up in, the fritterbits tasted as great as the whole ones. I liked that the vegetables (a cheerful, colorful, healthy mix of them) were the focus, instead of being just flecks in a batter. The Indian spices are a nice, savory twist, as was the curry-lime yogurt, though I could probably have devoured the fritters quite happily without it (as we all know, I’m just not a condiment person).

A thoroughly enjoyed these also, so much that he forgot to complain about the presence of the hated peas. Though Indian-spiced vegetable fritters may won’t depose zucchini fritters from their cherished place in our hearts, I expect them to be welcomed into regular menu rotation.

¼ cup frozen peas, defrosted
1 small onion, peeled
1 small russet potato, peeled
1 small yam or sweet potato, peeled
1 medium carrot, peeled
1 small zucchini
2 large eggs
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
¼ teaspoon ground coriander
¼ teaspoon ground turmeric
½ teaspoon ground cumin
1 tablespoon minced peeled fresh ginger
1 tablespoon minced fresh cilantro
salt and pepper to taste
olive oil

Curry-lime yogurt:
1 cup plain yogurt
1 teaspoon curry powder
½ teaspoon sugar
Several squeezes of fresh lime juice, to taste
salt and pepper to taste

1. Using a box grater, coarsely grate onion (you may have to mince onion using a knife unless your grater is very sharp), potatoes, carrot, and zucchini and place in a colander in the sink to drain.

2. In a large mixing bowl, lightly beat eggs. Whisk in flour, coriander, turmeric, and cumin. Mix in ginger, cilantro, and peas.

3. Gently press vegetables in colander to extract excess liquid, then add to bowl. Season mixture with salt and freshly ground black pepper. Using a wooden spoon or your hands, mix well but do not overwork.

4. In a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat, heat 1–2 tablespoons olive oil until hot but not smoking. Drop 4 scant ¼-cup portions of vegetable mixture into pan and flatten with spatula to form 3-inch pancakes. Fry until bottoms are golden brown and pancake holds together, about 4–5 minutes, then flip over and fry until golden-brown and crisp, an additional 4–5 minutes. Transfer to paper towels to drain; season immediately with salt and pepper.

5. Repeat Step 4 until all batter is used (you should have 8–12 fritters total).

6. Mix curry-lime yogurt ingredients together in a small bowl. Serve fritters with dollops of yogurt.

Serves: 2–4
Time: 30-40 minutes

POPPY-SEED ALMOND MUFFINS

I made these muffins two weeks ago (gack, I’m so tardy with these postings!), while watching the Oscars, as mentioned in the beef-and-curry pie saga below. I’m not a huge muffin fan; I mean, I never find myself thinking, “Gosh, I could really go for a muffin right now.” In general, sweet breads, especially at breakfasttime, are not my kettle o’ fish. (Neither are kettles of fish, for that matter.) I do really love miniature versions of larger foods, like cupcakes instead of cake and personal pan pizzas instead of, er, impersonal pan pizzas? So when I think about baking, muffins appeal more than loaves of bread. Mostly, though, I just love almond-flavored foods. My mom made these muffins while I was growing up and I adored them, though I never had any interest whatsoever in the no-doubt delicious blueberry, bran, or whatever-else muffins she baked. Now I make these from time to time and pretty much inhale them. Besides being delicious, they are so easy. And the perfect thing to bring when it’s your turn to supply the treats for a departmental meeting, take it from me. Just remember to buy almond extract, or you might have to run out to the store (no, two stores, when you realize Trader Joe’s has peppermint extract but no almond) and thus miss Jack Black and Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly singing a very funny Academy Awards song that everyone will be talking about the next day and you’ll feel left out and keep reminding yourself to find it on YouTube, but you’ll never actually get around to it. Hypothetically speaking, of course.

¾ cup sugar
½ cup margarine or butter
2 eggs
1 teaspoon almond extract
1 cup low-fat or nonfat plain yogurt
2 cups flour
3 teaspoons poppy seeds
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon baking soda
Sliced almonds

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2. Cream together sugar, butter, eggs, and almond extract.

3. Add yogurt, flour, poppy seeds, salt, and baking soda and stir until just moistened.

4. Grease muffin tins and fill each cup about two-thirds full of batter. Sprinkle muffins with sliced almonds. Bake 15–20 minutes.

Variation: For poppy-seed lemon muffins, replace plain yogurt with lemon yogurt and almond extract with lemon extract.

Makes: 1 dozen
Time: 30 minutes

BEEF AND CURRY PIES

I refuse to blame this recipe for the fact that both times I’ve made it, I’ve suffered a nervous semi-breakdown. The first time was understandable; after having spotted these savory-looking little pocket pies in an issue of Gourmet lent to me by P, I had been hankering for them. I carefully shopped for all the ingredients (even going to an additional grocery store to secure the frozen puff pastry), set aside some time on a Sunday evening to tackle what looked to be a lengthy baking process, got all ready to begin, and…realized I had no curry powder. Yes, I’d forgotten to buy one of the ingredients specifically named in the title of the recipe. All was repaired by A volunteering to make a quick trip to Vons, and the pies turned out very tastily, reminiscent of samosas. (Similar ingredients, with the potatoes and meat and peas, and like samosas, they weren’t that moist or saucy inside.) A, though suspicious of peas, loved them, even the rather greasy leftover ones (puff pastry just doesn’t reheat well).

Last Sunday night, when I was again possessed with the desire to make beef and curry pies, was, of course, the date of the Academy Awards. I was greatly looking forward to watching the Oscars and had seen all five of the nominated Best Picture films in preparation; what I’d forgotten was that the show airs so early in California, beginning at 5:30 p.m., whereas I spent the first 27 years of my life in Minnesota cozily watching the awards late into the night in my PJs. So as the show began, I was still hustling around, trying to make muffins for my coworkers, clean the kitchen, and of course, make dinner. The situation was completely my own doing, but nonetheless resulted in a tantrum of frustration when, two hours later, I was still embroiled in chores and missing all the good montages. I cut a few corners and was in a sulky mood when the beef and curry pies finally emerged from the oven and we sat down to eat, but you know what? They were still tasty.

So don’t think this recipe is cursed or anything. Just don’t forget to buy curry powder, don’t make these when you’d rather be watching TV, and heed these few additional notes:

1. The original recipe made 8 servings. I’ve cut it in half, because unless you’re throwing a dinner party, you don’t need 8 beef and curry pies. They don’t make good leftovers, they’re not that healthy for you, and two boxes of frozen puff pastry could cost you easily $10. Who are you, the queen? Oh, that’s right, this is Gourmet, after all. We’re lucky we weren’t asked to make our own puff pastry from scratch.

2. I might not have cooled my filling for precisely 30 minutes. “Screw this cooling completely,” I might have been heard to mutter after 20 minutes. “Lukewarm is good enough.” It didn’t make any discernible difference.

3. Your peas don’t really have to be thawed before you add them to the skillet. They’re teeny; they’ll thaw when surrounded by hot beef. Maybe they’ll help cool down that pesky filling, like tiny ice cubes!

4. I don’t own a 5-inch cookie cutter. I don’t actually own any cookie cutters. I used the 5½-inch mouth of a bowl to cut out the pastry rounds. They turned out just fine.

POSTSCRIPT, April 2011: The last time I made these, I realized it would be much easier (no cookie cutter) and more cost-effective (why throw away all the trimmings from that expensive puff pastry dough?) to use the pie-shaping method from my chicken-leek pie recipe, which simply has you roll the sheet of dough a bit thinner, slice it into four equal rectangles, and simply fold each one over the filling into a triangular pie. I still used both sheets of dough, for a total of 8 pies (I've gotten over my "these don't make good leftovers stance" and find reheated puff pastry just fine now), so I doubled the filling quantities just in case. I had some leftover filling, but oh well. Anyway, do yourself a favor and follow my streamlined advice rather than adhering to Step 5 below.

¼ pound ground beef (not lean)
½ tablespoon soy sauce
¼ teaspoon sugar
⅛ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon vegetable oil
½ medium onion, chopped (½ cup)
1½ teaspoons curry powder
1 medium russet potato, peeled and cut into ¼-inch pieces (½ cup)
3 tablespoons water
2 tablespoons frozen peas, thawed
1 (17½-ounce) package frozen puff pastry sheets, thawed
1 large egg, lightly beaten

1. Mix beef, soy sauce, sugar, and salt with your hands in a large bowl until combined well.

2. Heat oil in a 10-inch nonstick skillet over moderately high heat, then add beef and cook, stirring occasionally and breaking up into small pieces, until just browned, about 4 minutes. Remove beef from pan with a slotted spoon and place on a paper-towel-lined plate to drain.

3. Keep the skillet containing the beef drippings over moderately high heat; add onion and cook, stirring occasionally, until softened, 3–5 minutes. Add curry powder and potatoes and cook, stirring occasionally, until potatoes are translucent, 3–5 minutes more. Add water and cook, stirring and scraping up any brown bits from bottom of skillet, until liquid is absorbed and potatoes are tender, about 1 minute. (Don't worry if your potatoes aren't totally tender by the time all the liquid is gone; they'll get cooked in the oven.) Return beef to skillet and stir in peas, then cool filling, stirring occasionally, about 30 minutes.

4. Meanwhile, preheat oven to 400 degrees.

5. Roll out one sheet of thawed puff pastry into a 12-inch square on a lightly floured surface with a lightly floured rolling pin and cut out four 5-inch rounds with a cookie cutter. Mound ⅓ cup filling atop each of two rounds, leaving a ¾-inch border around edges, then brush edges lightly with egg and cover with another round, gently stretching to cover filling completely. Gently press edges with tines of a fork to seal, then transfer pies to baking sheet. Repeat with remaining sheets of dough and filling to make a total of 4 pies (you may have some filling left over). Brush tops of pastry lightly with egg and bake until pies are deep golden brown and puffed, 25–30 minutes. Cool pies about 10 minutes.

Serves: 4
Time: 1–1½ hours

BIG ZUCCHINI, HAM, BASIL, AND RICOTTA FRITTERS

Boy, do I love fritters. Already A and I are at the point of eating zucchini fritters for dinner at least once per month, so often and with such gusto that we’re slightly abashed; as I’m making the week’s menu I’ll casually ask him, “Any requests?” and he’ll just as casually venture, “Zucchini fritters?” We treat them as a main dish now, with a little green salad or tomato salad on the side just to keep us civilized, which is important because otherwise we’d probably be eating them with our hands right out of the skillet, they’re that good. And I’m already counting the months until fresh-corn season so I can embrace Jack Bishop’s corn pancakes with the passion they deserve. And now here comes a new recipe to tempt me.

I found this recipe on my new favorite food blog, the Smitten Kitchen. Really, this is just the sort of thing I was looking for when I started my own blog—someone to hungrily, thoughtfully test new recipes for me and write about them in great detail, with helpful and delectable photographs. It’s a bit more upscale than my own style (more highbrow recipes, more challenging techniques, and did I mention the gorgeous photography?), so occasionally I have to look away or be blinded by envy. But in a nice way.

This recipe is originally from Donna Hay, who (I’m exposing my ignorance here) is apparently a sort of Australian Martha Stewart? She is apparently also a genius, because these are great fritters. Actually, they’re almost like big pancakes. I found them supremely comforting, which was important, because I made them last week when A had been endlessly sick with what turned out to be tonsillitis. I was, I think, fighting off the illness myself, and besides had grown a little oppressed with my caretaker role. I can’t think of anything more wholesome and healing-sounding than breakfasty foods for dinner, and sure enough, the fritters fit the bill perfectly. I think I could have chosen better ham (the low-sodium stuff I bought at Trader Joe’s was too much like lunchmeat, and oddly flavorless), but otherwise it was a resounding success. Which is good, because I had to buy self-rising flour especially for this recipe, and I now have a big bag to use up.

I have to admit, this recipe is even easier than my beloved zucchini fritters, since you don’t have to go through the hand-cramp-inducing rigmarole of squeezing the moisture out of the zucchini. Nothing else to note, except that one fritter makes a pretty big serving; after taking a look at the first one I made, I ended up scrapping the salad I was planning as a side dish and just had some immunity-boosting orange slices on the side.

*Exciting postscript, December 2008: No self-rising flour? No problem! Make your own by placing 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder and 1/2 teaspoon salt in a 1-cup dry measuring cup, then filling the measuring cup the rest of the way with all-purpose flour. Simplicity itself!

1 cup self-rising flour
2 eggs
1½ tablespoons butter, melted
⅓ cup milk
salt and pepper to taste
½ cup ricotta cheese
¼ cup torn basil leaves
2⅔ ounces ham, diced
1 zucchini, grated
4 tablespoons olive oil

1. Place the flour, eggs, butter, milk, salt, and pepper in a large bowl and whisk to combine. Fold in the ricotta, basil, ham, and zucchini.

2. Place 2 tablespoons oil in a medium frying pan and heat over medium heat. Add half the fritter batter to the pan (about 1 heaping cup) and cook for 2–3 minutes or until bubbles appear on surface. Flip fritter and cook 2–3 minutes longer or until both sides are golden brown. Remove to a plate.

3. Add another 2 tablespoons oil to pan and make a second fritter with remaining batter. Cut each fritter into 4 wedges and sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Serves: 2
Time: 20 minutes

BLANCS DE VOLAILLE BONNE FEMME

(Chicken Breasts With Onions, Potatoes, and Bacon)


I love that the French have a cooking style called “bonne femme,” or “good woman.” From one exhaustive minute of Google research, I’ve gathered that “good woman” dishes are those prepared in a simple, hearty, peasant style. Because, you know, those good women don’t need to be doing too much thinking. And, if they're anything like me, they loves them some bacon.

This dish, from Bistro Chicken by Mary Ellen Evans, is indeed simple and hearty, as well as bacony. There are no seasonings except salt and pepper, unless you count the bacon fat that everything gets cooked in, but the basic ingredients—bacon, onions, potatoes—blend together perfectly and make what might be an otherwise dull chicken breast into a satisfying meal. I had cooked this a couple of times last year, but then somehow forgotten about it until this week. I’m glad I rediscovered it, and A is exceedingly grateful. Serve this with a big green salad, and you too can declare yourself a good woman.

The only downside? Thanks to incredibly poor signage and meager selection in the produce department at Vons, I ended up paying a whopping $5.99 for the pearl onions. Yes, they’re cute, and taste-wise totally worth it, but—boo!

2 tablespoons canola oil
½ cup diced thick-cut mild bacon (2 to 3 slices)
4 (6-to-8-ounce) boneless, skinless chicken breasts
* If breasts are large, use 2 and cut each in half horizontally
salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
¾ cup whole baby onions, fresh or frozen (thawed, if frozen)
2 cups diced red potatoes (about ¾-inch dice)

1. Cook potatoes in boiling water until tender; drain.

2. Meanwhile, heat the oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. When hot, add the diced bacon; sauté until crisp, 4–5 minutes. Remove with a slotted spoon; drain on paper towels.

3. Season chicken with salt and pepper and add to skillet along with the onions. Sauté until golden brown on both sides, 2–3 minutes per side. Reduce heat to low, cover, and cook, turning once, until chicken is no longer pink in thickest part when cut with a knife, 4–5 minutes per side. Remove chicken to a warm platter; top with onions and cover with foil to keep warm.

4. Increase heat to medium-high. When the pan is hot, add the cooked potatoes and fry 4–6 minutes or until browned; season with salt and pepper to taste. Stir in the bacon. Scatter the potato mixture over the chicken and serve immediately.

Serves 4

INDONESIAN-STYLE CURRIED VEGETABLE SOUP

May 2008 update: Pretty, huh? If you're wondering what the orange chunks are, that's because the farmers' market didn't have red bell pepper, so I used orange instead. Also, on a whim I sprinkled cilantro over the top of the soup this time and it was awesome, so I've added it as an optional ingredient below.

I’ve had this recipe for at least 5 years, but I don’t cook it too often. When I do make it, I enjoy it, but then I forget it, catch sight of it in my recipe book and wonder, “Really? Did I really like that enough to keep it?”, and decide to test it again. No more of such shenanigans! After cooking it yet again on Sunday night, I am definitively telling you: this is a good recipe.

It’s quite different from most of the things I make; I tend not to be into “exotic” international cooking, only because I figure I can’t possibly (at least, not without a great deal of specialty grocery shopping and effort) cook anything at home that will be as authentic and complex and awesome as the Pad Thai I can get just down the street from my apartment, for instance. I’d rather leave it to the pros. But although this soup has a lot of ingredients, they’re all basic. They marry together well and create a complex, multi-layered taste, but without any difficulty whatsoever on the chef’s part. Cut things up, add them to the pan in stages, cook them, and voila! A curried, coconutty, cheerfully yellow, hearty, vegetable-laden soup.

This recipe is so flawless, I didn’t even have to make a single change. No ingredient substitutions, no quantity adjustments, no comical errors! I wish I could remember where I found it.

2 tablespoons canola oil
2 medium onions, finely diced
4 garlic cloves, minced
2 teaspoons minced gingerroot
2 cups (6 ounces) thinly sliced mushrooms
2 teaspoons ground coriander
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon turmeric
⅛ teaspoon cayenne pepper
4 cups vegetable or chicken stock
juice of 1 lemon
1 (14-ounce) can coconut milk
1 teaspoon salt
2 large boiling (waxy) potatoes, peeled and cut into ½-inch dice
1½ cups green beans, cut into 1-inch lengths
¼ cup finely diced red bell pepper
½ cup fine egg noodles or 1-inch pieces broken spaghetti
minced cilantro for garnish (if desired)

1. Warm oil in a large stockpot over medium heat. Add onions, garlic, and ginger and sauté, stirring often, 10 minutes or until onions are soft and golden.

2. Add mushrooms and sauté 5 minutes. Sprinkle on coriander, cumin, turmeric, and cayenne and cook 2 minutes, stirring often.

3. Pour in the stock, coconut milk, and salt, and bring to a boil. Add potatoes and cook 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

4. Mix in the green beans, red pepper, and noodles, and cook at a lively simmer for 10 minutes or until vegetables and noodles are tender. Stir in lemon juice.

Serves: 4–6
Time: 1 hour

BANANA-NUT MUFFINS

I had 4 ounces of leftover cream cheese sitting in my refrigerator (after making Tortellini With Mushroom-Cheese Sauce a couple of weeks ago), and I needed something to go with the curried coconut vegetable soup I was planning to make for dinner, so on Sunday afternoon I figured I’d whip up a half-recipe of these muffins.

I got the recipe from P (along with a delicious sample of the finished product) a few months ago; she got it, I think, from AllRecipes.com. The first time I made it, the muffins tasted OK, but were flat and ugly and misshapen. This time, they were high and fluffy and golden and perfect. I don’t know what made the difference, but they turned out well enough now for me to recommend the recipe. Nothing fancy here, flavor-wise, just banana, pecans, and cinnamon (the quantity of cinnamon perpetually surprises me—a tablespoon seems like an awful lot—but it tastes good). The only novelty is that the cinnamon, nuts, and brown sugar are placed in a thin layer in the middle of the banana muffin, which is kind of visually cool, reminiscent of geologic formations. But the point is: yum.

Postscript, December 2009: I never made these again. I rarely make banana muffins anyway, and for those rare times when I do, I think I like these better.

½ cup unsalted butter
8 ounces cream cheese, softened
1¼ cup white sugar
2 eggs
1 cup mashed bananas (about 2)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2¼ cups all-purpose flour
1½ teaspoons baking powder
1½ teaspoons baking soda
¾ cup chopped pecans
2 tablespoons brown sugar
2 tablespoons ground cinnamon

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly butter 2 muffin tins.

2. In a small bowl, mix together chopped pecans, brown sugar, and cinnamon.

3. Cream butter and cream cheese together. Gradually add white sugar and continue beating until light and fluffy. Add one egg at a time, beating well after each addition. Stir in mashed bananas and vanilla. Add flour, baking soda, and baking powder. Mix until batter is just moist.

4. Fill muffin cups just one-third full. Sprinkle pecan mixture over batter and top with remaining batter.

5. Bake until tops of muffins are just golden and an inserted knife comes out clean, about 10–15 minutes.

Yield: 2 dozen
Time: 30 minutes