4.16.12: dessert (fresh orange juice with strawberries/zumo de naranja con fresas)

Fresh orange juice with strawberries/zumo de naranjas con fresas

T.S. Eliot had it right: while April carries the promise of spring and teases us with ramps and morels and other ephemeral delights, we’re still stuck with some of the least inspiring fruits of the year as lamented recently by my friend Kitchen Witch. Yes, we still have citrus since the growing season for many of the best fruits now extend through May, but after a solid five or six months of tart acidity, I know I’m dying for something, anything, different in the fruit stand that’s in season and therefore not mealy or ludicrously expensive. And in April, usually, that seems far too much to ask.

But then, while flipping through my copy of Spanish Country Kitchen one lazy Saturday morning, a dessert I had flipped past hundreds of times stood out to me as perhaps the perfect dessert for this time of year: fresh orange juice with strawberries. While most of the seasonal citrus fruits are beyond their peaks, Valencian oranges are just getting started: first appearing in February, they are available through October, and are ideal as juicing oranges. Seeing some good-looking Californian strawberries on sale 2/$5 at Stew Leonards’ sealed the deal, and a few nights later we enjoyed this simple treat on one of the warmer spring evenings we’ve had lately.

04.03.12: chicken liver tortilla and pan con tomate/pa amb tomaquet

Chicken Liver Tortilla/Tortilla de Higaditos de Pollo

Tommy DeVito: Hey, what do you like, the leg or the wing, Henry? Or ya still go for the old hearts and lungs?
Henry Hill: [Vomiting] Oh, that’s so bad!

–Goodfellas

Despite Michael being the resident meat-lover in our household, I’m the offal enthusiast. I can’t get enough of the so-called nasty bits, and I think this has something to do with the fact that my grandmom would always let me have the various turkey giblets when she would roast a turkey, and I’d happily snack on a lung or heart with abandon. These days I naturally gravitate towards any offal tacos I find at a taqueria, but can usually only look with longing at the many recipes in our cookbooks that feature things like chicken liver or tripe because someone doesn’t like the smell/taste. (To be fair, this is how I feel about broccoli. Nasty stuff, that is.)

This means I am usually Tommy DeVito to Michael’s Henry Hill, and I’ll admit I enjoy quoting the line above with the same amount of glee that Joe Pesci does in Goodfellas. Related: that is an excellent movie.

Jamon, jamon, or: the story of the sex ham.

Jamón Ibérico de Bellota

Do you have those foods that you never, ever purchase (usually due to some combination of expense, availability, and no idea what to do with it) but long for anyway? Or foods that you have reserved in your mind to only indulge in for a very specific, very celebratory reason, regardless of whether you’ve ever tasted it or not? The image of sitting down at a fine steakhouse and ordering the Wagyu ribeye along with a glass of 80-dollar scotch comes to mind, if just a tad on the extreme side. To get to my point: it’s the treat that you know you can only indulge in as a treat maybe once a  year at most, or something you’d only buy for very, very special reasons.

I have a few things on that list like mozzarella di bufala and a really good bottle of champagne, but my biggest obsession that I never indulged in was getting some jamón ibérico de bellota either from Fairway or Despaña. While no cured ham could be considered a bargain, ibérico is the platinum standard, widely considered the apex of cured ham deliciousness and usually it can only be had for, at minimum, 100 bucks a pound. When you live in a place like New York, ephemeral luxuries like this feel far too outrageous to indulge in without knowing exactly what you’re getting, so I  told myself that I would figure out a really good reason to get some eventually. I’d see the hock of it at Fairway when it would be my turn to wait in line at the deli, but I always managed to resist an impulse to purchase it.

07.23.11: tapas (Copper River salmon with mojo sauce, lemon-garlic chicken wings, and mango-pluot gazpacho)

Copper River Sockeye Salmon with Mojo Sauce

Heat waves are awesome, aren’t they? They sap your energy completely, make venturing outside after 8AM and before 8PM a dangerous proposition, and–if you’re anything like me–a big ol’ sweaty mess. I literally walked across the river from my office to go to the farmers market on Thursday at lunch (at most six-tenths of a mile) and came back drenched. And very flushed (from exertion, not from sun thankfully). The trains didn’t fare much better–Friday afternoon three (!) trains coming from New Haven got tangled up in wires because of the heat, so I had to drive myself home because they suspended service around 5:00.

At least I wasn’t one of the poor people who were trapped on those trains.

07.10.11: dinner (all-i-pebre de llagostins, tortilla de vegetales y torrada mallorquina. Oh–and two World Cups.)

Remember this from a year ago?

Spain winning the 2010 World Cup, July 11 2010

Oh, I still do. I can still remember the emotions when I watched that game a year ago (when this posts): I can still feel how I was wracked with anxiety, willing the Spaniards to overcome that whole “no team has ever won a World Cup when they lost their first group game” statistic and win against the Netherlands. And then Andres Iniesta scored and it was amazing and wonderful and Iker Casillas started to cry in happiness.

And then this happened yesterday:

The USA triumphs over aversity. (click picture for source)

This was a quarterfinal game, yet it was treated like a semi-final or a final: the number-one-ranked team in the world versus the number-one-ranked player in the world (that would be Marta), and it was rife with controversy thanks to some really bad calls from the ref and some childish behavior from the Brazilians during the extra time in order to run out the clock. But then a (literally) last-minute goal thanks to the combined powers of Megan Rapione and Abby Wambach tied up the game at 120 minutes of play, and  then the team dominated the penalty kicks. It was an American triumph at its cheesy-80s-sports-movie-best, and dammit, it was amazing. That it fell on the 12th anniversary of the women’s team WC win in 1999 in Pasadena was the icing on the cake.

That we made some delicious food seems almost secondary, but it’s the last home-cooked food I’ll have until Thursday (as I’m off to Chicago) so we reached, we shot, and I couldn’t be happier with the results.

7.01.11: hummus and musings about time, cooking, and shopping.

Caramelized Onion Hummus

In the five and a half years I’ve lived in Connecticut and New York, I’ve been fortunate to be within easy walking distance to gourmet shops that stocked most of the basics we might need for a weeknight meal–in New Haven, it was Romeo and Cesare’s, and in New York I didn’t even have to leave my own building as our apartment was literally above a bodega. I’m going to miss being able to take the elevator down there and swan around in flip flops and tank tops ind the dead of winter while the bundled-up folk give me the side-eye, but now I miss it as an easy resource to pick up a block of cheese, some lemons and limes or a can of chiles in adobo whenever I needed it without adding any significant time to my otherwise epic commute, because it allowed us the freedom to be spontaneous.

Now that we’re in Stamford, things have changed drastically. The closest convenience store to our building advertises their stock of sodas and body oils, which doesn’t inspire the most confidence in the quality of any food they might carry,  so if either random inspiration strikes us or we realize that we forgot to get something at Fairway, the closest store we have to walk to is…Target.

6.25.11: tapas (chorizos, morcillas, anchovies, and mushrooms)

Chorizos and Morcillas over Caramelized Onions

We’re sort of settling into a new routine here: Fridays have become our designated night to explore area restaurants so weekends can be spent cooking at home and taking advantage of all of this gorgeous natural light that we have in our new place. We’ve already dabbled in American, Italian and Mexican fare with varied results, but one place we have yet to go to is the Stamford outpost of Barcelona Wine Bar. You know–that place whose cookbook we write about on a fairly regular basis? We live within a very easy walking distance (it’s shorter to walk there than it is to walk to Havana Central on the West End from our old apartment) but I’ve resisted going there because a.) it’s not going to be a cheap tab and b.) I prefer to go there feeling and looking more fabulous than I usually do after hoofing it back from the train station on a warm Friday night.

We’ll rectify all of this soon, but in the meantime we’re mining the cookbook for gold. And the above recipe–blood sausage, caramelized onions, bread (and our addition of chorizo) is golden. Much like the caramelized onions.

05.29.11: dinner (Catalan tapas and ¡VISCA BARÇA!)

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Cotzas a la Marinara (Algherese mussels, sailor-style)

I had a few key negotiation points when it came to the move–I wanted to live someplace more urban than suburban and on the Metro North New Haven line–but one of the most pressing, at least from a timing perspective, was being able to watch FC Barcelona in the Champions League final on the 28th. After all, I had spent all season following this tournament (in addition to La Liga play) and the match was guaranteed to be a good one–they were going to play Manchester United! Good to his word, Michael took care of it and I was able to watch the Catalans win the Cup in a most triumphant fashion, unlike the clásicos from April that were just  bitter and awful and so heated. Watching Barça slowly decimate Man U, sapping their energy in chunks (and then finishing them off with a decisive third goal courtesy of David Villa) was just what I needed as we started sifting through our things and emptying boxes.

So naturally I made sure that I had Catalan Cuisine unpacked in due order so we could make a lovely victory spread of tapas.

04.20.11: tapas (quince paste, manchego anejo and the Copa del Rey)

Copa del Rey tapas spread

It’s probably a good thing that I don’t work in the city, especially near SoHo, because I’d be far too tempted to sneak a trip to Despaña on my lunch hour in order to pick up a few goodies either for dinner or the weekend on a regular basis. I say this because I’ve managed to make a trip there any time I’ve had time off or at least time to myself in the last few months despite it being somewhat of a haul to get down there from our apartment. I blame the draw of the Union Square Greenmarket and the fact that it’s really easy to go both to Despaña and Eataly once you’re in that general vicinity.

Well, as long as you don’t have a cranky husband to tote around with you. I kiiiiiiiiid.

03.13.11: dinner (a.k.a. empanada-gate 2011)

Barcelona's Empanadas with Smoky Pepper Sauce

I must admit I have been avoiding writing about this particular dinner. However, I am a firm believer in resolving problems via confrontation, and thus, it’s time to start avoiding the issues and begin the healing.

Drama aside, I do think that one of the most challenging aspects to cooking is planning and timing (I refuse to type the phrase ‘time management’) . If you’ve ever had a large dinner party, planned a multiple courses or just cooked a multi-faceted dinner, then you know how tricky it to make sure all the components are ready at the correct time, without having food sit for too long, or worse still, having the cook sit around waiting for something to finish wasting time and postponing your dinner.