01.03.12: dinner (first pizzas of the new year: tomato pie with scallions and bacon and a white pie with ricotta, prosciutto di parma and arugula)

Tomato Pie with Jumbo Scallions and Bacon

I hope the holiday season gave you all time to be still and reflect on the year as it passed perhaps via most golden and perfect of all meditation opportunities, fooling around in your kitchen with no pressing need to generate a large or timely meal, maybe utilizing a night or two in that golden week between Christmas and NYE. If you did not have this opportunity, I guess you missed out.

By the end of it all, even I had had enough. Lasagna and Thanksgiving Food Dinner II with the families, a standing rib roast for the two of us, fried chicken on NYE and a sundry of interspersed meals inspired by greats like Tom Colicchio and David Chang. You might think I’d give up after this feastish onslaught and say “meh” on this particular evening, but the last night before the return to work, waking up early and wrestling I-95 called for something delicious, if not seasonal. E suggested making some pizzas and that felt perfect.

Meditiations on smoked pork.

Smoked Pork Shoulder

Okay, so I re-visited the local fire codes and electric cooking devices are allowed on patios. I can therefore speak freely now about the latest foray into North-of-the-border balcony barbecue. This venture was not motivated by, but certainly reinforced by one of Alton Brown’s final Good Eats episodes, this an hour-long treatise on pork smokery.

This particular beast was the product of an impromptu spend-off, hastened by the approach of Hurricane Irene. We found ourselves in Fairway the Friday before the storm arrived, ready to fight of hoards of nasty panic-stricken Metro-ites (Metroids?) filling the cart with everything in sight not just for the storm itself, but for the week. Not a terribly logical action, you might say- stocking up on perishables before entering a period where power (and thus refrigeration) loss was highly probably- and you’d be right. I guess fortune favored the foolish and we were lucky enough to retain electricity throught the ordeal and my shoulder, roasted all day Saturday, was safe.

08.26.11: dinner (orzo with spinach and shiitakes, spicy zucchini and steak topped with tomato and onion)

Steak with Tomato and Red Onion Salsa, Orzo with Spinach and Shiitake Mushrooms, and Spicy Zucchini

I abhor New Year’s Resolutions (I know it’s September, please stay with me, friends). I think the idea that one must wait until an arbitrary day to make a change in life is self-defeating. I read somewhere that the enemy of personal growth is Monday, not because Mondays are bad but because we vow to ‘set things right, starting Monday’ and thus never get anything done.

Don’t worry, the self-help portion of the entry has concluded. There is an opposite extreme though, that of someone seeing an opportunity for positive change and going a bit… buckwild I think is the technical term (from the French buquewild meaning ‘holy shit, chill out dude’). So, currently trying to find a balance saddled with a new job that is as fulfilling as it it draining, when I received a cadre of new cookery books from my bro-in-law, yeah I went a little wild.

07.13.12: dinner (Bachelor Chow 2–steak!)

Ah, the bachelor plate. A scant array of sliced cooked creature, a starch drowned in a bottled sauce- all that’s missing is a sad bit of broccoli tenuously clinging to the side, although for some gents that is even a step too far. The paradigm of razor-sharp solo male sustenance. This could be presented in a disposable foil tray, slung from a food truck or small take-out place to the same effect. Still, the simplicity can belie some elegance, stark though it may be.

07.11.11: Cobb Salad (Bachelor Chow 1)

Deluxe Cobb Salad

Last week the Mrs. was outta town for work,  leaving me to my own devices. Said devices were less than thrilling, as E left me for the beginning of the work week only and save for some serendipitous short-notice primo sport seats, not much can go down without the wife in town on a Tuesday. Maybe it’s a lack of imagination on my part.

6.26.11: appetizer (top secret smoked chicken wings)

Smoked Chicken Wings

Okay. I’ll admit that I may have been a bit too forcefully tight-lipped about the small device taking shape from bits of hardware store fodder on my balcony. I think having worked in an operational chemistry lab for so many years makes me skittish about revealing that I have a off-spec MacGyver-style contraption running in my purview of operation. Believe me, I knocked together some humdingers during grad school, stuff that I think if the New Haven fire chief ever saw he’d make me turn over my clamps and duct tape once and for all. For legal purposes, I am obligated to write at this point that I am entirely joking…

05.30.11: dinner (steak dinner from the broiler)

NY Strip Steak with Arugula-Lamb-Mache Salad and Baked Sweet Potato Fries

These lovely pictures were snapped by E on our first weekend in Stamford. We were still surrounded by boxes but we decided we needed a break from packing tape and our piles of treasured shit and return to the center of our New York power- we visited our beloved Fairway. [Ed.--one, if not both of us visited Fairway every day over the Memorial Day weekend, including Friday.]

Briefly (I think E is planning a far more detailed breakdown for a later date), the food fanatics behind Manhattan’s best supermarket, Fairway (131st St and 12th Ave), have opened a branch right here in our new little corner of the metro world in Stamford on Canal St in from what I can tell from Google Maps was a vacant lot. But I digress.

06.15.11: dinner (Spain meets Latin America, and musings on a new routine)

Turkey and Chorizo with Quinoa, Avocado and Scallions

[Ed.--So Michael has been getting used to his new job and our new routine and therefore hasn't been contributing anything here aside from cooking. Let's welcome him back today!]

Yes, I have a new job. It’s accompanied by an hour drive in either direction and while the trip itself is by no means awful, it does take a healthy bite out of my day. Long past seem the days of sauntering home in the time it took my ipod to play a single song, now it’s more like an entire CD or so. I’m certainly not complaining, [Ed.--he SO is!] but everything’s definitely different now.

I certainly have become aware of that certain sensation that I’ve read about over the years, where you get home and you don’t feel like cooking. Perish the thought, of course, but still, my brain’s cooking center hasn’t been firing quite has hot as I’m used to, but where there’s a will, there’s a way and when the going gets hungry, the hungry get going.

01.09.11: dinner (beef bourguignon, first attempt)

Bœuf Bourguignon

Looks good, doesn’t it? Another delicious plate of braised goodness to enhance a lovely Sunday afternoon, right? Nothing like taking some delectable ingredients for a long, wet thermal haul in the old dutch oven on top of the stove, right? Well, not exactly.

This lovely dish starts in that most delightful of French way: bacon. I usually start a braise off browning meat in olive oil, then moving onto the veggies and finally building the liquid up before adding the meat back in and walking away for a good couple-a hours. To make something French, simply make bacon lardons thy fat source and replace any diced onions with pearls. I don’t mean to demean the difference, in fact these simple swaps can makeover a dish and take something you know how to do and turn it into something new.

04.30.11: dinner (ceviche and malanga-chip crusted scallops)

Spicy Tuna and Shrimp-Chipotle Ceviche

I think it’s safe to say that spring has finally arrived in New York City. We were very lucky to have a gorgeous couple-a days last two weekends, and we decided that our Saturday dinner should reflect the sunlight and the final departure of the cold. When I think delicious dishes in warmer weather, ceviche is one of my most beloved go-to recipes because there’s so much room for variation that you never have to repeat a combination (unless you want to). It reminds me of one of my other favorite dishes, one that’s also an unending source of variable deliciousness, pizza.