the SIMMER blog

pardon the interruption

Hope you've been enjoying Green Week! I've been thinking of the blog all week, as I've been staring down avocados, green peppers, cucumbers, scallions, and a host of other greenery as part of a four-day entertaining marathon I hope to blog about in the coming weeks.

Unfortunately, thinking's all I've had time to about it!

The next couple of days will be quiet around here, as I'm off to New York for the annual, and much-loved, Backspace Writers' Conference. Time for some networking with fellow writers. And a little relaxation, which never hurts. Especially when you've cooked four dinners in four nights for an average of 10 people a night.

(it's been a HUGE amount of fun... but as the Man in Black says, "That doesn't leave much time for dilly-dallying.")

More on Monday!

wordless wednesday xi

 

green week: brussels sprouts

Brussels sprouts get a bad rap. They're tiny cabbages, so when you cook them, they have a tendency to reek something awful. But they're delicious when done right, so if you've only had the frozen steamed ones, it's worth it to try a different spin.

One of my favorite ways to prep these is to shred the sprouts, by which I mean, cut off the base and slice them really thin. You would think a mandolin would make this easier, but really, a good sharp knife does the trick. Then you just saute those on the stove for a few minutes -- yes, bacon fat makes an extra-special saute, and I've used duck fat too -- and serve up.

Ah, here's the recipe I learned that strategy from. (I had candied pecans from the store, so threw those in... very tasty.)

But how I've done them in the past year -- how I've done so many things in the past year -- is braising them, a la All About Braising.

 

green week: broccoli rabe

No, not that kind of green. Not, y'know, environmental green, though I have nothing against the earth and trying to save it. But this green week is a literal green week. One green ingredient a day, celebrated.

Today? Broccoli rabe.

I'd heard of broccoli rabe before moving to Philly, but I'd never actually cooked with it, and I'm not even sure I'd even eaten it. Oh -- wait -- yes I had. On Roberto Donna's pizza, back when he did the intensely popular Galileo Grill in DC. One guy next to me in line said his mother called broccoli rabe "the Italian national flower." And indeed, Italian cooking is where you'll most often see it. With sausage and pasta, usually. Or here in Philadelphia, on the city's best sandwich, DiNic's roast pork at the Reading Terminal Market.

(Get it with aged provolone too, or you're missing out. Here endeth the lesson.)

It's a bitter green and not for everyone. You can't just throw it in a stir-fry or a salad, like other vegetables. It's special.

I usually steam it in a small amount of water for, say, five minutes, then drain, and saute in some kind of awesome fat -- olive oil, butter, Niman Ranch bacon fat, your choice -- and then add red pepper flakes, salt, and pepper.

And then, because sometimes you don't need to invent new flavor combinations when the perfect one already exists, I serve it in a sandwich with aged provolone and roast pork.

Mmmmm.

and now, for something...

"C'mon summer" week has wrapped up, but now I've got a theme in mind for next week... a quick hint below. Enjoy your weekend!

c'mon summer: orzo salad

 I'm kind of a feta nut, so when I read that the Barefoot Contessa's roasted vegetable-feta orzo salad was a reliable and delicious recipe, I leapt to it.

With a few customizations, of course. Mushrooms instead of eggplant, for example.

  

And maybe the addition of cherry tomatoes changed the moisture quotient, but I needed way less of the lemon-olive oil dressing than called for. I put some on when the orzo was still warm, and saved some to put on right before serving, but even then, I didn't even use all of it. Plus I halved the olive oil in the roasting phase and the feta in the finishing phase. You'll see a lot of the same in the online recipe and comments.

(I'm generally afraid to put minced garlic on vegetables while they're roasting since it can get burned and bitter, but these vegetables give off so much liquid it works perfectly in this recipe)

 

wordless wednesday x

c'mon summer: strawberry-lime sorbet

I'm a giant fan of The Perfect Scoop (becoming ever more giant the more ice cream I make, of course) so I usually follow David Lebovitz' recipes exactly as written. But I was making three flavors of ice cream for a party a few weeks back, and I wanted a fruit flavor sorbet... strawberries were on sale... but plain strawberry didn't seem, I don't know, interesting enough. And the book had a recipe for blackberry-lime sorbet. I was inspired.

 

Usually I would put a couple of tablespoons of alcohol in a sorbet -- rum, or vodka, or whatever -- to keep it from freezing too solid. But since the other two ice cream flavors I was making already had alcohol (the Aztec hot chocolate flavor has brandy, and Milk Chocolate-Guinness, well, you know) I held back. And this one did fine without it. Maybe it was all the sugar.

 

c'mon summer: strawberry shortcake

Ah yes. It's been a while since Guinness Week. About time for another theme week on the blog. And since I'm sick of the rain and cloudy skies, how about this for a theme: C'mon, summer!

I'm sure in a few weeks I'll be lamenting the humidity and heat and high air-conditioning costs, but right now, what I wouldn't give for a nice blast of sunlight and weather that required shorts. But if we can't have the nice weather now, we can at least prepare the food that evokes it. And get the recipes ready. 

As the weather gets warmer, we ditch the gingerbreads and the molten chocolate cakes for lighter things. This time of year, those lighter things often revolve around strawberries. Of course you can just slice them, stir in sugar, and wait 10 minutes; but if you want something a little fancier, there's strawberry shortcake.

I know a lot of people prefer sponge cake, but biscuits work better for me. They cook up quick and aren't too sweet. If you don't have a favorite recipe, you could do worse than these.

Aw, summer. Hurry please. These tasted pretty awesome as is (the biscuits soaked up all the juice from the strawberries and got spongylicious), but might have been even better eaten on a porch somewhere, while drinking a glass of something pink, and watching a summer sunset.

(oh, did I click "book news" too? right. cross your fingers for me this week, okay? more on that soon.)

mmmmmom nom nom

I was away from the computer on Mother's Day, but all this week, I've been reading great mompreciation pieces, from journalists and bloggers and whathaveyou, like this awesome column from Michelle Von Euw over at Intrepid. And though for privacy reasons I don't like to natter on too much about my nearest and dearest on the blog, I figured it was worth taking a moment to celebrate my own mom, who is wonderful and brilliant and simply the best mom I could ask for. If it weren't for her I wouldn't know how to make spritz, or spaghetti sauce, or whiskey cookies, or Cornish pasties, or, well, anything.

Of course on Mother's Day itself, we were making pierogi:

Tasty Ukrainian (mom's dad's side of the family) pillows of soft dough, filled with potatoes and cheese. Boiled, then sauteed in lots of butter. Served with sour cream. I would have taken a picture of a cut one so you could see the filling, but... we were too busy eating. How about a close-up instead?

And one of the kielbasa we served with it so it wasn't a 100%-carb meal (not that I would have minded that one bit.) 

 

Food is love, you know.