4.21.12: El Clásico, feast-day chicken and a crazy coca.

Xavi demonstrates my mood during much of the match.

It’s been a tough week for FC Barcelona and its cules: an unexpected loss earlier in the week to Chelsea in the Champion’s League finals was bad enough, and then on Saturday we had to suffer the indignity of Real Madrid coming to Camp Nou and do the unthinkable–win. While RM has likely taken La Liga this season, it’s not over yet for my Catalans as there’s the second leg of Champion’s League yet to play this week, and in a month they’ll be fighting for the Copa del Rey and won’t have to beat Real Madrid to do so.

In other words: I have plenty of opportunities to whip up more Catalan food in support of the blaugranas.

3.25.12: pizza and the return of Mad Men.

Sweet and Sour Fig Pizza with Goat Cheese, Shallots and Thyme

Do you still have “Zou Bisou Bisou” stuck in your head after last Sunday’s Mad Men? (Did I just get it back in your head after you thought you had bested that earworm? Sorry.) While it was inevitable that we were going to celebrate its return after at 17-month long hiatus with food and drink, the fact that you only rarely see any of the characters with food (with none of it looking all that appetizing to boot) meant that I wasn’t going to adhere to any strict theme, save for insisting Michael make us a round of Old Fashioneds. Certain nods to the show, after all, must be made, and cocktails have always felt far more appropriate than food.

Caprese salad and old fashioneds.

Besides: we had finally gotten a couple of new half sheet pans at Chef’s the day before, and I was in the mood for homemade pizza.

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.

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.

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.

05.01.11: dinner (garlic, cheese and herb pizza and duck, fontina and onion pizza)

Duck, Fontina and Caramelized Onion Pizza

One of the incredibly irritating things about moving is slowly losing access to things that you maybe don’t use everyday–your spontaneity becomes more limited. or at least more time-consuming, as you suddenly have to knead dough by hand.

The humanity!

One thing I really hate about moving is when you realize that certain things are the “last” things: the last time we had to make the trek from Fairway Harlem laden with bags (that was Sunday), the last time I ride the 1 regularly (I don’t want to think about that right now), the last time you make pizza dough or fresh pasta dough. Of course, all of these vary in emotional significance–although my lower lip may have trembled a little bit when we were in line for the register at Fairway and I stared out the window at the foggy Hudson and cursed the fact that the weather was so crappy. But then Michael casually mentioned packing away the Kitchen Aid and I realized that these pizzas were the last to be made here in New York. If they must be the last…at least they were delicious. And a little over the top.

02.12.11/02.20.11: duck ham.

Duck ham!

Have you heard about Charcutepalooza yet? Two particularly intrepid food bloggers have deemed 2011 the Year of Meat, and so they (along with about 300 other bloggers) are working their way through Michael Ruhlman’s Charcuterie with a new challenge each month. January was duck prosciutto, February was pancetta and bacon, and for March corned beef (or brined pork chops or chicken) is the challenge of the month, and it’s so inspiring to see the posts and the recipes and the dedication that real charcuterie requires. You really should follow their exploits because it’s yielding some fascinating results. Because we live in an apartment that is not only dry as a bone but also at least 85 degrees during the winter and summer thanks to intense radiators and no air conditioning it’s unrealistic/unsafe to commit to the rigors of the year-long challenge, but it hasn’t dimmed my craving for some of the meats that have  been featured or to follow along in our own way.

Fortunately, we can make duck ham thanks to a recipe from Tom Colicchios’s Think Like a Chef that is short (at least in meat-curing terms), delicious and easy. If it’s good enough for the head judge of Top Chef, well, it’s good enough for us.

12.25.10: dinner (a low-key Christmas)

Sticky Lemon Chicken with Orzo Pasta Salade with Mozzarella, Cherry Tomatoes, Green Onions and Red Peppers

Christmas comes but once a year, luckily. Okay, I don’t mean that. But it’s hard when you’re young marrieds you can find yourself at the mercy of two families instead of one and the maneuvering gets… difficult. Since we just completed an odd-numbered year, we did Thanksgiving and Christmas day with my parents and Easter and Christmas Eve with Elizabeth’s. My family had a large dinner planned with friends December 26th, so between the Eve and that, a big Christmas feast is right out. So, E and I offered to make the non-feast, far from home on Christmas night.

11.21.10: dinner (bikini-pizza and sausage, peppers and onions pizza)

Sun-dried Tomato, Cremini Mushroom and Fresh Mozzarella Pizza

[Ed.--Elizabeth found herself craving some bikini-pizza from this post, and so when Michael suggested making pizza to use up some leftover fresh mozzarella an actual pizza was born.]

With the prospect of Thanksgiving looming, we deemed our weekend ought to do without my beloved roasted chicken. One night we opted for a duck ragu, and the farthest possible go-to from that, I guess, must be two homemade pizzas.

The first, the ‘bikini-pizza’ as it were, was a bit wet once all was put upon the dough thanks to lots of fresh mozzarella, mushrooms and a twist with sun-dried tomatoes instead of fresh or canned. I anticipated this and and as such did not blind-bake the crust, giving the entire assembled pizza as much time in the hot box as possible. I covered an up-turned baking sheet with foil so if too much cornmeal got into the oven and burned, I could pull the entire thing out for the second pie. The day was dry and the dough was well-behaved, disembarking the pizza peel with ease. We bailed it after about 13 minutes at 500 F with a couple of spatulas and some oven mitts, as well as a optimally placed cutting board to rest.

11.06.10: dinner (roasted veal short ribs–they look just like the picture in the book!)

Roasted Veal Short Ribs

If you read our last foray into The Les Halles Cookbook, you’ll recall that the meal we attempted was delicious but also… ambitious. Enough that it caused a little stress on the way to French bistro-style sated joy. Dauntless,  your indefatigable friends at the Manhattan Food Project forged ahead, and this time, things were different.

I need to preface this discourse with the comment that none of this would have been possible without a special order filled by Esposito and Sons’ butcher shop  in Hell’s Kitchen. I called them on Thursday morning and they got me my pièce de résistance, veal short ribs. Yes, yes, I said veal. We don’t cook it often and we’ve articulated some of our opinions on the matter in some earlier posts.