the SIMMER blog

happy holidays from the SIMMER blog!

With the hectic holiday season upon us, the SIMMER blog is on hiatus through the end of the year. Join us in 2011 for more on cooking, eating, reading, writing, and of course, the release of THE KITCHEN DAUGHTER!

 

(And if you're enjoying the more relaxed pace of the pre- or post-holiday doldrums, check out the extensive archives at right -- categories like "entertaining", "ice cream", and "sweet" make it easy to find what most interests you in the posts of the past two years. Take a little tour!)

(Insider stat info: "duck" is by far the most popular. Really! What is it about duck?)

best bites of 2010: miscellany

Last of the 2010 roundups!

So of course things don't always fall neatly into categories, and some of the best things I ate this year were neither homemade nor restaurant food. Some were prepared by professional chefs and some weren't. I ate these things sitting on a bench, or walking down the street, or as a guest in someone else's home, or in a cooking class. The world is too complicated to put in two buckets. And everywhere out there, there's something worth eating.

Top 10, no particular order:

1. Pretzel M&Ms. 'nuff said.
2. Pies N Thighs chicken biscuit. This would have been on the restaurant list if I'd actually been out to their Williamsburg restaurant, but as it is, I got addicted to these spicy, sweet, crunchy little masterpieces at a temporary booth next to Madison Square Park, and then again when they took a booth at the Columbus Circle holiday market. Hot sauce. Honey butter. Crunchy biscuit perfection.
3. Lobster tails poached in gewurztraminer & pear nectar. We made these at my first class at the Astor Center, and they are mindblowing. No doubt they'll make the homemade list next year now that I have the recipe.
4. Dorie Greenspan’s World Peace Cookies, which I ate at the pop-up CookieBar. Ditto what I said about the lobster.
5. Irish Potato gelato at Capogiro in Philadelphia.
6. Sweet Potato Praline Pecan gelato at Capogiro.
7. Apricot sorbetto at... you get the idea.
8. Weight Watchers Santa Fe Rice & Beans. Don’t judge me.
9. Bacon cheddar scone from Bouchon Bakery.
10. Lamb and chicken mixed platter from the halal cart at 53^rd and 6^th. Extra red sauce, extra white sauce. And in case you ever wondered, the cart with the shorter line is exactly the same as the cart with the longer line. We taste-test so you don't have to. SIX DOLLARS, people, and enough for two people for dinner.

Yes, it's been a very good (and very delicious) year. Here's to the same in 2011!

best bites of 2010: restaurant division

You may have heard: New York City has a whole lot of good restaurants. And I visited a lot of them this year, which makes it really hard to pick just 10 dishes out of the dozens I was lucky enough to try. On a different day I might come up with a different list, but here we are today, and here are 10 things I thought were utterly and distinctively delicious, and which I highly recommend:

1. Saffron lasagna at Hearth. Light and lemony, two words you may never have heard associated with lasagna before. I have no idea how they do it, which means I'm just going to have to keep going back there and ordering the lasagna over and over until I figure it out.
2. Shaved frozen foie gras with lychees at Momofuku Ko. For the price, some people would rather have white tablecloths and attentive waiters. I'd rather have a backless stool, my elbows up on the bar, and a heaping helping of this just-exactly-rich-enough indulgence. (Honorable mention, same meal: pretzel panna cotta. WHOA.)
3. Patatas bravas at Tia Pol. These are straight-up traditional tapas, perfect potato chunks slathered in spicy sauce and garlic aioli. Nearly fistfought my dining partner for more than my share. A mere eight bucks.
4. Sorbets at Per Se. No, I've never eaten in the dining room, but of everything I've had in their (a la carte menu) lounge, a sampling of four sorbets knocked my proverbial socks most clearly off. The olive oil rendition in particular. Amazing.
5. Mushrooms al forno at A Voce Columbus. It is very hard for me to order anything that is not pasta at Italian restaurants in general, and A Voce in particular, but this appetizer of a few perfect roasted mushrooms with just enough creamy sauce and a sprinkling of roasted hazelnuts rewarded me for my restraint.
6. Frascatelli alla Romana at Union Square Cafe. And then... there are the days when the restraint goes out the window. Crrrrreamy and gorgeous. With just a touch of sweetness from Greenmarket corn. But I'm not going to lie to you -- it's mostly cream.
7. Lobster Roll at Luke’s Lobster. Actually, the shrimp roll, lobster bisque, and lobster roll are all things I'd pass up a much fancier meal for, but as lobster rolls go in NYC, you're not going to find one more purely lobsterrific, and you're certainly not going to find one this good for $16 ($16 with soda and chips, and they're awfully good soda and chips.)
8. Short rib huarache at Distrito (no link because their site has music, sorry!). I don't get back to Philly nearly often enough, but when I do, if I don't make a pilgrimage to Capogiro and at least one Garces restaurant, it's a personal failure. I have the short rib huarache (flatbread) every time we go, but my 2010 huarache was the best of them all, because it was eaten sitting in THE CAR. (If you've been to Distrito, you know what I mean; if not, suffice to say there is only one table at Distrito that is actually inside a vehicle.)
9. Ricotta pancakes at Maialino. Oh, Danny Meyer, Danny Meyer. Did you need to go and open up another restaurant for me to get fat in? Well, okay. If you insist. Just keep the pancakes coming.
10. Black Label Burger at Minetta Tavern. I will put up with a lot for a good burger. A high price tag for the burger itself. Indifferent wine that ratchets up the overall tab even more. A hyped-up restaurant that clings to its cool. And this burger? Is absolutely the best burger in New York, accompanied by equally powerful and irresistible fries. If Shake Shack is your blue jeans (strong, consistent, ready for every day), and the lamb burger at the Breslin is a nice sport coat, this burger is your tuxedo.

Tomorrow: equally delicious, non-restaurant miscellany!

 

wordless wednesday liv

 

best bites of 2010: homemade division

We've got a few more weeks of December to go, but the year-end roundups have already begun -- and why not, right? Of course there's more eating to do, but there's plenty of previous eating to choose from. Like I did last year, I'm going to split things up into a few different lists. Without further ado, my 10 favorite bites of the year, made here at home:

1. Spicy calamari with bacon and scallions. Simple to make, super-delicious, what's not to love? Well, unless you keep kosher.
2. Dulce de leche ice cream. Rich and rich and rich.
3. Blueberry boy bait. Buttery and moist, one of the best cakes I've ever had, and simply perfect for sharing. The highest and best use of blueberries, in my humble opinion.
4. Cheddar shortbread. (The only repeat from last year, but just too glorious to skip.) 
5. Portuguese green beans. More delicious than you'd ever think green beans plus garlic plus cilantro could be. Bonus points: easy do-ahead for parties.
6. Scallops with cauliflower puree. I love a good scallop, and my favorite way to serve them is browned just right, sauced lightly with vermouth and butter, and served over this rich-tasting-but-good-for-you cauliflower puree, which only has a little butter and no cream at all. Practically health food!
7. Fig crostini. Sometimes, all it takes to make a delicious bite is a) good shopping and b) good assembly. I toasted thin slices of walnut bread from Bouchon Bakery, spread them with peppered goat cheese, and lay superthin slices of Brown Turkey figs over the top. Done and done. And then scarfed.
8. Celery salad with dates, walnuts, and pecorino. Summer salads are easy. Winter salads are more of a challenge. But this one is good any time of year, not to mention just plain good. Kicked it up a notch with a vinaigrette of sherry vinegar and walnut oil from Garces Trading Company.
9. Homemade duck prosciutto. Self-explanatory.
10. Fingerling potatoes browned in duck fat. Hm, looks like I never posted about this one... no time like the present! No trick to it, really: you halve the potatoes, put them in the pan with the duck fat, turn on the heat, grab your tongs, and wait patiently for the perfect shade of toasty brown to appear.

 

Stay tuned this week for my favorite restaurant dishes of the year, as well as some miscellaneous bites that didn't fit either of the other lists. (Pies-N-Thighs chicken biscuit, anyone?)

Q&A month at Writer Unboxed

I post every month at Writer Unboxed on some aspect of writing -- revision, craft, the publication process, what-have-you -- but December we decided to do something a little different. So all across Writer Unboxed, December's topics are 100% driven by reader questions. Which worked out great for me (and hopefully for the readers) since I was responsible for answering questions on two topics near and dear: MFAs and metaphors.

To read through all the latest posts you can hit the main site here, or you can start with my MFAs and metaphors post by clicking here.

Happy reading! Happy writing! Happy December!

wordless wednesday liii

 

kitchen daughter review copies!

As a debut author, there are a lot of amazing moments along the way -- the deal! the contract! the first check! the laid-out pages! -- and one of the most amazing of them all happened recently at Kitchen Daughter HQ: the arrival of actual, physical, incredibly booklike ARCs.

I say "incredibly booklike" because they're not the finished book, as you can probably guess from the word "Advance" in Advance Review Copy, but:

 
They have spines and covers and they're filled with words. Words I wrote. Whoa. So yes. Very very very much like a book.

 
Oooooh.

 
Aaaaah.

publishing and the princess bride on intrepid media

You know how sometimes we say "I've heard it all before?" Well, this one, I don't think you've heard: most sage publishing advice can be communicated in terms of famous quotes from the movie The Princess Bride.

A reach? Perhaps. A new way to communicate some of the more important tips and tricks of a weird and wonderful process? I think so.

Click here for publishing and the princess bride.

pizza-making class at the astor center

Oh, how I love carbs. I spent a recent day off wandering around town and indulging in some culinary fun, and when I tallied up my dishes at the end of the day, I realized I had eaten nothing but bagels and pizza.

It was a good day.

So when my usual Wednesday night plans got cancelled, I jumped at the chance to take the hands-on pizza-making class at Astor with Chef Emily (who led that delicious and merciful hands-on lobster class a couple months back). And it was a win, because we didn't just make pizza. We did that, and it was fantastic, but things went to a whole 'nother level when we found out we would also be making my other favorite thing in the world: cheese.

Mmmmmm, cheese.

So for most of the time I was too busy with the hands-on dough mixing/kneading/stretching and the cheese pouring/pinching/pulling to actually lay hands on my camera, but what does it matter what things looked like along the way when the finished product is so very pretty:

 
In addition to the thin crust (so easy, so good) we also made a few deep-dish pizzas with focaccia dough:

 
Delicious, delicious.

How was the cheese-making, and would I do it at home? We made ricotta from whole milk, cream, and white vinegar, and I would definitely do that again. I even have cheesecloth. Score. You heat and curdle the milk, then ladle it into a cheesecloth-lined sieve and let it drain until it firms up. Very simple. The mozzarella was definitely harder to replicate, for several reasons; we started with a block of curd from Murray's, and since they don't sell it in chunks smaller than 20 pounds, I'm unlikely to tackle that task; and the making of the cheese involved thrusting our hands into ice water to numb them, and then plunging them into near-boiling water and stretching the curds with our fingers.

(Yes, you should have seen jaws drop around the room when that step was explained.)

So we mixed our thin-crust dough and let it rise while we made cheese, cooked up tomato sauce, and sliced toppings, and while the prep was happening the dough rose plenty:

 

Unnecessary zoom! Also, dough-cano!

 
Also: yum.

 
And yum.

 
And yum.

 

(I should mention, also, that along with the meats-and-mozz-with-tomato-sauce traditional pies, two of those above were sweeter white pies: fig/honey/cherry/ricotta with mint, and tangerine/thyme/honey/ricotta with black pepper. Honey before baking, herbs after. Utterly delicious.)

(I should also mention that supreming a tangerine is a gigantic pain in the you-know-what if they are seedy. Seedless citrus is a whole lot easier on your knife and your nerves. But it can be done, to very tasty effect.)