05.26.13: dinner (lobster soup with “shredded” spaghetti, or spaghetti tagliuzzati con zuppa di aragosta)

Spaghetti tagliuzzati con zuppa di aragosta

Lobster and pasta: it sounds so simple, doesn’t it? And doesn’t it sound like the epitome of the springtime or summer meal, something to enjoy after a nice day at the beach, perhaps served with a refreshing beer or glass of white wine?

Oh, were it so simple. The truth of the matter is that this is a dish that demands patience. Not only does it take some work to get all of the components ready, but it’s one that requires you to wait until the ingredients are in season because anything otherwise would result in a less-than-stellar meal. I knew this when I first saw the recipe in Made In Sicily months ago, so I abstained from even thinking about it. But then Memorial Day weekend came, and Michael was home after a long week in England, and Fairway had lobster on sale. Even the tomatoes smelled delicious, despite it not quite being peak tomato season just yet in our neck of the woods.

In short: I waited long enough to have this, and to borrow a phrase from Alton Brown, my patience was going to be rewarded.

02.02.13: recipes from Polpo (lamb-pistachio meatballs, pericatelli in salsa, and roasted grape and goat cheese bruschette)

Roasted Grape and Goat Cheese Bruschette

As a rule, I try not to be too precious about my cookbooks. They’re meant to be practical, after all, and the best ones should bear the stains of cooking: the pages a little warped from sauce splatters, little smudges here and there on the edges, even pages escaping the binding after years and years of use. When I pull a book from the shelf and sit down on the couch to browse it, those little signs of wear and tear remind me of successful (and even the less-than-successful) meals.

My practical outlook was almost turned upside down when I unwrapped a copy of Polpo on Christmas Day, because in my hands was quite possibly the most aesthetically pleasing cookbook I ever had the pleasure of owning. I instantly loved everything about it: the typeface, the photography, the paper used for the pages. But the absolute neatest visual aspect about this book is the spine::

How cool is that? And then I found this fantastic article from The Paris Review a few days later on the evolution of the bookshelf and that back in the days when books were primarily found in monasteries they would be placed with the front edges out, all ornately illustrated. But I digress.

07.29.12: dinner (pericatelli with tomato, thyme, and bacon and veal rib chops with compound butter)

Welp. I didn’t realize how long it’s been since I hit “publish” on this blog until I saw that my last update was in May. Early May. I can offer no good explanation for this–I know when this kind of extended silence happens elsewhere in the blogosphere, it’s usually due to news of great import, but I can assure you that is not the case here at all. Between the new job, various summer outings, visitors, and finally getting into Game of Thrones, the summer has been full so far.

04.29.12: dinner (drunken bucatini with poached eggs, piave, and pancetta)

Drunken Bucatini with Poached Eggs, Piave, and Pancetta.

Of the many things I miss about New York, access to the year-round greenmarkets can get really high on the list when I’m craving certain foods; namely, carbornara. It’s easy to feel confident about 99% of the foods we purchase at Fairway, but the only time a shadow of doubt crosses my mind is when I want to combine raw eggs with pasta. I was taught over our honeymoon that only the freshest eggs would do for pasta alla carbornara, so now I need to be able to know that the eggs I’m buying are fresh enough to do so–hence the need to buy directly from the farmer.

But what’s a girl to do when those greenmarkets aren’t a stone’s throw away anymore? While we aren’t horribly far from the city, it feels kind of silly to spend nearly $20 a person to go into Manhattan just to get eggs. That’s when the idea struck to add poached eggs to an otherwise simple combination of pasta, pancetta, and cheese, and that making the pasta drunken would keep things even more interesting.

12.27.11: dinner (rib roast and Tom Colicchio’s orecchiette with artichoke, cabbage, and cranberry beans)

Bone-In Ribeye Steak, aka the best damn roast beef we ever had.

One of the downsides in traveling to celebrate the holidays is not having a reason to buy any of the special holiday-only products that are usually in one’s supermarket meat department. At Fairway this is particularly difficult when you see such fascinating things like goose or capon or the crown roasts of lamb and pork that are on special and look absolutely delicious, but are far too large for two people to reasonably consume on their own. The week before Christmas tested our resistance to not hauling home a huge hunk of meat when Fairway was sampling its standing choice rib roasts: two bites of the medium-rare beef had us both sorely tempted,  but it felt a little too over-indulgent, even for us. Cut to a few days later when a gift card to my favorite store fell into my lap and it took all of five seconds for me to offer to use it to procure a couple of bones of rib roast. We purchased it the evening before we were heading to Pennsylvania for the holiday weekend, and the following morning it was in the fridge, dry-aging to perfection.

12.03.11: dinner (orecchiette with sun-dried tomatoes, tarragon, veal stock and some other stuff)

Orecchiette with Tomato, Tarragon and Prosicutto di Parma

You know how when you make a tomato sauce and there’s all of those dark red or purple bits on the side of the pan? I want to make this sauce taste like that.
–Michael on the way home from Fairway after I nagged him to death about his super-secretive sauce idea.

It’s been a while, hasn’t it? I wish I had some profound reason for our collective silence, but to be honest, it boiled down to not feeling terribly inclined to write about food. The Thanksgiving holiday leaves me with nothing to say about holiday cooking since we’re not the ones cooking it, and we have to travel, and frankly I’m over writing about various squashes and how good they are with sage and rosemary and waxing endlessly on the deliciousness of roasted vegetables.. Yeah–they are all awesome. We know that. Let’s move on.

Over the course of the fall Michael and I have been tweaking red sauces fairly often, in part to rebel against the beige-ness of what tends to be made this time of year. This is a dish that evolved from that culinary puttering (see Michael’s quote above) as well as a very intense desire to have a sun-dried tomato pesto with orecchiette after a rather silly conversation on Twitter (see the #pastawar tag to see what I mean). Michael completely ran with it and flatly refuesd to give me the details of what he was thinking as he gathered ingredients at Fairway. Bastard. But I trusted him because he had a vision, and that vision included prosciutto di Parma, and there was no way I was going to object to any of it.

10.02.11: anniversary dinner (piemonte specials – carpionata piemontese and pappardelle with porcini mushroom and white truffle))

Carpionata Piemontese

Now I am quietly waiting
for the catastrophe of my personality
to seem beautiful again,
and interesting, and modern.
The country is grey and
brown and white in trees,
snows and skies of laughter
always diminishing, less funny
not just darker, not just grey.
It may be the coldest day of
the year, what does he think of
that? I mean, what do I? And if I do,
perhaps I am myself again.

Frank O’Hara, excerpt of “Mayakovsky” from Meditations in an Emergency

This passage kind of perfectly expresses those mean reds I mentioned a week and a half ago that have taken up in casa TMFP. It hasn’t helped that it was a fairly rainy week and therefore the sky grew dark out even sooner than it should, and in one of those rainstorms Michael’s new car was lightly clipped by some jerk near his office. And ugh–as I write this it’s gotten grey and moody outside again. It’s like the weather is gleefully pissing all over my “Operation: Abolish Mean Reds” efforts with every cold, grey, sodden day. It’s why we curled up with the second season premiere episode of Mad Men in all of its angsty glory but at the same time pushed ourselves from a culinary perspective–we may be indulging our grumpiness in some ways, but tasting something new and different could also be the jolt we both need. First up: our anniversary dinner on Sunday and going back to a genuine happy place.

07.17.11: dinner (simple Italian and…yeah, the Women’s World Cup)

True Grit. (click image for source)

I have a bunch of posts that should come before this one, but given the time-sensitivity of sports, it’s kind of necessary to write about the World Cup final hours after it ended. I heartily congratulate Japan on its World Cup win because it was well-deserved and came after a pretty epic performance by both teams. As happy as I was when Spain won last year, the game was tough to watch with the physical aggression and some playacting and diving and whatnot, so it was gratifying to see both of these teams comport themselves with grace, dignity, grit, tenacity and a hell of a lot of spirit. This was a game decided on playing football and not on bad calls or bad attitudes, and while I’m glad Japan has had a much-needed boost of national pride and joy, I want to thank the US Women’s National Team for one hell of a ride with this World Cup and for playing their hearts out on the pitch time and time again. It’s a performance that was extraordinary and inspiring, and while they faltered during the penalty kick phase of this game, they truly are the epitome of American sporstmanship.

OK–onto the food! 

6.26.11: dinner (pericatelli con frutti di mare)

Pericatelli con Frutti di Mare

I have a confession: there is a distinct possibility that pasta might be boring me ever so slightly. This isn’t so much against the pasta itself so much as I find myself a little bored with sauces. It’s summer, so the default topping I always seem to fall back on is some combination of tomato, basil and mozzarella–all good things, believe me, but I don’t want to burn out on that trifecta before August when the really good tomatoes are in the market. Defaulting back to my favorite ragus aren’t really an option either, because they are far too heavy after a hot day.

Finding no inspiration in our cookbooks (I think this is a sign I should get a pasta-centric one, don’t you?) I turned to the New York Times. (Aside: can we discuss how awful this ad is? It’s like they decided to unironically pay homage to every infuriating stereotype about pretentious New Yorkers ever in 30 seconds, and make them sound like the American extras in Vicky Cristina Barcelona. These responses to it, on the other hand, are absolutely hysterical.) I probably used up the monthly allotted clicks on my searching mission, but it was totally worth it.

05.08.11: dinner (pericatelli all’amatriciana and an announcement)

Pericatelli all'Amatriciana

There are boxes in our apartment.

Most of them are folded up for now, but only because Michael has misplaced the packing tape he brought home a few days ago.

You know what that means.