the SIMMER blog

in good company at magical musings

The very kind Marilyn Brant included The Kitchen Daughter in a recent spotlight post at Magical Musings -- thanks, Marilyn! The other two are Sarah McCoy's The Baker's Daughter and Kristina McMorris's The Bridge of Scarlet Leaves, both definitely worth checking out. In addition to our similar last names (funny, isn't it?) all three authors have something else in common -- our novels include recipes, and each of us shares a little bit about the book and a recipe in Marilyn's spotlight post.

Click here for a taste of all three novels!

the perfection of roast chicken

It may not have snowed much in our part of New York this year, but there have been some pretty darn cold days -- and nights. And on those cold nights, there's nothing I crave as much as a simple roast chicken. Piping hot, makes the house smell nice, and while it's at its best when I plan ahead and do a one-day brine and one-day let-dry-in-the-fridge, it's also great if I just oil it up, pop it in the oven, and wait.

Sides can be anything you want -- I'm fond of green beans slow-cooked with bacon, McHenry-style -- but a sweet potato cooked either in or out of the pan is a great choice, and you'll see here a mashed-up melange of potato and celery root also has its place.

The best thing about roast chicken is how it makes the house smell. The second best thing? Leftovers.

 

(Cooked down the picked-over chicken bones to make stock, added soy and hot sauce and noodles and scallions and whatnot, seasoned with ginger and garlic and star anise. Don't eat the star anise.)

t minus one!

Sorry it's been quiet around here lately -- ironically, it's because there's too much happening! Tomorrow is a big day here, with The Kitchen Daughter coming out in paperback and my e-short story Croquembouche also launching. And having just moved Chez Simmer to a new home, I can now turn my attention back to all matters delicious.

First things first. I made some cookies.

Russian Teacakes are one of the must-do McHenry Christmas cookies every year. They're a wonderful nutty shortbread, rolled in powdered sugar while they're still warm to form a sweet, sweet coating. If you've seen Mexican Wedding Cakes, they're very similar, but because the Betty Crocker Cooky Book calls them Russian Teacakes, that's what we call them around here.

And they're delicious. Messy to eat, but delicious.

(If somewhat imperfectly captured by my iPhone camera. Hey, everything's in boxes. It's a small miracle I could even find the baking sheets!)

ate, wrote, retreated

So I recently spent three days in Ashevile, North Carolina, and I came back STUFFED. Ahhh, what incredible food. And I should have expected it -- I was there with the Eat Write Retreat folks, and knowing how very very full I was after their event last May, I should've known we'd be indulging in the same way for this event too.

Oh, how we indulged.

This was a butternut squash "cannelloni" stuffed with goat cheese, part of an extensive chef's tasting we enjoyed at Biltmore Estate as our very first event. We then took a quick tour through the Tiffany exhibit on the grounds, and headed back to the Bistro for dinner. So we started out with overindulgence, and continued straight on through the weekend in the same way.

Next morning, we met up at Early Girl Eatery for breakfast and a discussion of good photography principles -- but don't judge the workshop based on my results here. I was experimenting with my brand-new iPhone camera. Point and click with very little nuance, here.

But man, those were some seriously good pancakes.

I also got to meet individually with each blogger in attendance -- I'd evaluated their blogs in advance and given them each a printout of what I considered the strengths and weaknesses of their writing, as well as a writing assignment for the weekend. They were all receptive and interested in stretching their skills. What a great group.

Then, we actually went to see some things that weren't food! Yet.

 

cook this now: green peach salad

I have a recipe problem. The problem is this: I read so many food blogs and magazines that I will often suddenly be struck with the desire to make a particular dish, realize that I read a recipe for it about a week before, and then... realize that I have absolutely no idea where I read that recipe or how to find it again.

This summer, that happened with a salad made of unripe peaches. I wanted it. I craved it. I was at a loss. So I turned, as I do in these situations, to Twitter.

And miraculously, the cookbook author Melissa Clark offered to send me a recipe from her book Cook This Now, which wasn't even coming out til October. Guess what? Now that it's October, I can tell you about this salad, since now you can go buy your own copy of Cook This Now and get the recipe.

I made it with nectarines:

 

And then again with white peaches:

 

And it was just perfect on the side of a nice shrimp saute with bacon and scallions.

 

It's a not-quite-sweet, not-quite-savory mix of ingredients, since the peaches/nectarines are unripe enough to be hard, and there's olive oil, and there's basil. And what else? Well, if you're craving the salad, now at least you know where to find the recipe.

Thanks, Melissa!

under the weather

Been a little quiet here lately, for which I apologize -- trying to get out from under a bad cold. I hate this kind of sickness, where my head is just cloudy enough to sllllow everythinnnnng dowwwwwn. Blech.

But the good news is, I'd already put a chicken in brine for Saturday night's dinner before my health took a turn for the worse, so that roast chicken gave us not only a full meal for Saturday night and snacks on Sunday, but enough homemade stock and shredded meat for a Monday lunch of spicy, rich, savory, sinus-clearing chicken noodle soup.

 

Recipe-like list of stuff for two large servings:

• 3 cups of chicken stock
• half a package of rice noodles (I like a very noodle-y soup)
• 1 cooked chicken breast, shredded
• 3 scallions, sliced
• 1 clove garlic, sliced
• 1 tsp powdered ginger
• a few splashes of soy sauce
• a little lemon juice
• a big glob of sambal oelek (or sriracha, or Tabasco, or something else for HEAT)
• 1 star anise (don't forget to remove before eating)

Ah. Yes. Breathe in the steam. Slurp up the noodles. Don't leave any of the broth. And get some rest!

 

steak au poivre

This is another one of those uh-oh-we-need-dinner-what-to-do kinds of things. I generally have a hanger steak or two around, in the freezer if not in the fridge, so in the Tuesday night scramble of the workweek, we often end up with that. And after eighty kazillion of them coated with a Southwest-ish dry rub, you can bet I was looking for something different.

And sometimes, something different is something simply classic. Like steak au poivre. Which just means "with pepper." And so: you need some pepper.

 

And you need some steak.

 
 
And if it's a Tuesday-night-style dinner your choices for vegetables are probably zucchini or a bag of frozen peas, so let's go with the zucchini.

 

Sear, saute, boom.

 

Yes, hurrying dinner doesn't always allow for precision lighting and photo evidence. But I assure you, it tasted pretty great.

 

mushroom rigatoni

It's no secret that I just adore Smitten Kitchen, so when I was hunting down a dish to make for friends with a new baby recently, I went directly to her site. I wanted something that was neither bland nor too spicy, substantial enough to be a meal on its own, nutritious, OK either to eat right away or later on, and easy to eat on the run.

And I almost found it.

Deb raves about this mushroom lasagna, slightly adapted from Ina Garten, and it did indeed sound delicious. But as wonderful as lasagna is and as fabulously as it freezes for later use, I worried about the large-block-like nature of it. Too hard to eat with one hand while holding a brand-new baby in the other? A pasta swap was clearly the answer.

So I made the recipe as written with the single adjustment of cooking up some al dente rigatoni instead of the lasagna noodles, and playing a little fast and loose with that whole "layers" concept. Worked like a charm.

 

And proof that cooking for others doesn't have to be without a reward for the cook:

 

I had to bake a separate serving for myself. There was too much to fit in the disposable foil pan... couldn't be helped. Also, it was DELICIOUS. Not quite as pretty without the extra broiled cheese on top, but believe you me, it did the job.

 Mmmmm. Broiled cheese.

 

tomato panzanella

So here's one of the great ironies of cooking for other people: sometimes I end up making things I don't even like. Not because they're not good, but because I'm actually a surprisingly picky eater for someone who loves food so much. The list of things I don't care for is awfully long -- all kinds of melons, cucumbers, eggs, fishy fish, chicken salad, canned tuna, most hams, and most definitely tomatoes, among other things.

But I'm not allergic to any of those things, I just don't like them. So if I think something would round out a meal, I'll incorporate it anyway, and that is most definitely true of summer tomatoes.

 

In this case, the main course of my five-course corn menu was rich and heavy, and I knew a slightly acidic, fresh-tasting vegetable counterpoint would be great. 

 

So I cut up a few pounds of multicolored tomatoes and got them ready to go.

 

Then I added glugs of olive oil and red wine vinegar, chopped up a couple shallots, and seasoned with salt and pepper and fried capers and red pepper flakes. And then I called in my trusty sous chef, to whom I am married, to tweak the flavors until they came out right. Then we let it sit for a couple hours as the time for the dinner party came ever closer.

 

As is so often the case, there was one more step to complete at the last minute, and I am notoriously bad at remembering to take pictures at the last minute. But you finish this off with a cubed and toasted loaf of bread -- croutons, basically -- which can be any kind of crusty bread, but in this case I used onion foccacia. That tomatoey-acidic-oil juice gets soaked into the bread and the result is delicious.

(Or so I hear.)

corn dinner part 2: smoked salmon on corn blini

So here's another post in the five-course corn dinner series -- this was course number one.

It's a fairly simple appetizer, and can be done mostly ahead, although the blini are especially good if they're still warm when served. The creme fraiche and smoked salmon are purchased, so that part's simple. And making these blini is as easy as making pancakes. I only tweaked the recipe a tad -- scallion greens instead of chives, just because I couldn't find any chives that day -- although next time I might thin the batter a little bit so the blini come out a bit flatter.

(And we tried adding wasabi powder to the creme as recommended in the recipe, but liked the flavors better without.)