the SIMMER blog

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.

 

Moments from Eat Write Retreat

I feel like I've been to a zillion writers' conferences, but I'd never been to a food bloggers' conference until Eat Write Retreat a few weeks back. And if they're all this good -- I may have myself a new addiction. (Spoiler alert: I suspect they are not ALL this good.)

Since we were all food bloggers, there are a lot of great roundups on attendees' food blogs -- so I don't necessarily want to do a comprehensive roundup. I want to talk about moments.

There were so many moments.

Here are five.

5. On our first night, Peter Smith and Gina Cherservani presented drinks based on desserts and desserts based on drinks. Every single bite and sip was delicious, but I actually giggled at my first taste of this pink dessert, named "Don't Mess With My Tutu."

 
It looks supersweet and possibly heavy, but it was light and tart and perfect. Especially with the little crunch of the buttery crust underneath. Love at first bite. The liquor-soaked cherry on top was... well, the cherry on top.

4. Monica Bhide's writing workshop, where she urged us to use all our senses in writing, rang utterly true with me on many levels. In some ways fiction and non-fiction are different animals, but they have a great deal in common, and use of the senses is one of those. I think the best novels are the ones that transport you to another world. You want to hear and touch and taste and smell that world, not just see it. She also urged us to bring our own voices, our own selves, to our writing. So true and so right.

3. We had a lovely lunch at McCormick and Schmick's on Saturday. I used to go there all the time when I worked a few blocks away, but in those days I was mostly eating the heavy, rich, heart-attack-in-a-bowl crab dip. This was a world away. I sat near the window, with the gorgeous daylight streaming in, and can't find the words to tell you quite how it felt when this beautiful plate was set softly on the table in front of me:

 
I didn't take many pictures over the weekend -- I knew others would -- but there was no resisting that image. Nor, 20 minutes later, was there any resisting this one.

 

2. In a brief moment before his panel, I got to tell Joe Yonan how long I've been a huge fan of the Washington Post Food Section, especially their open weekly discussions on washingtonpost.com -- I even asked the group for advice on where to put the recipes in The Kitchen Daughter (back when it was called Simmer).

1. My reason for attending the conference in the first place was to sit on the Beyond Your Blog Panel, with a group of incredibly talented and successful women -- wise people whose writing includes blogposts, cookbooks, columns, articles, memoirs, how-tos, and in one case (mine), a food-focused novel. They've all got great credentials, so I was already impressed, but -- wow. In person, I was just blown away. So lucky to be there.

(And here's the link to attendees' roundup posts -- some moving, some funny, some packed with wall-to-wall with gorgeous photos, and every last one worth a read.)

So glad to be part of the conference. As with every conference, I learned so much from the panels and activities, but as cliche as it is to say this, in the end, it's all about the people.

 
(photo by Olga Berman of www.mangotomato.com)

cinco de mayo sabroso

In the U.S. it seems that Cinco de Mayo is celebrated mostly with margaritas and Coronas. Not that there's anything wrong with that. But if you want to try something a bit more ambitious in your Mexican cookery, either in honor of the day or not, here are a few ideas from the archives of the Simmer blog:

• Shrimp in pumpkinseed mole
• Chiles en nogada
• Black bean enchiladas
• Other ideas for enchiladas
• Wholly mole

 

 



lovely leftovers

As you might have guessed, being busy these days (radio interviews! conference prep!) means there's less time for cooking. But I figured I could at least repeat my microwave lightbox trick with these absolutely gorgeous leftovers. Spaghettini with spicy budding chives and lobster, from Babbo:

 
I didn't make them, but I sure enjoyed them, so that's worth telling you about. Even after all these years it is nearly impossible to get a weekend Babbo reservation at anything but 5 or 10, so my husband and I sat at the bar for our celebratory meal. And what a meal it was. The mint love letters, in particular, are not to be missed. And there are SO many things on the menu I want to go back for, which I consider the sign of a pretty strong restaurant. Several courses of pasta and prosecco: not a bad way to celebrate.

all about alfajores

So I took these cookies to a Peruvian dinner at a friend's house, at which the host turned out dish after dish of INSANELY good, classic Peruvian dishes -- yuca frita, ceviche, aji de gallina, lomo saltado, arroz con pollo, and more -- every bite even better than the last. I'd offered to bring dessert before I knew quite how incredible the feast would be, so with every knock-it-out-of-the-park dish, I got more and more worried about serving my alfajores at the end. I mean, you never want the host of a dinner party to feel bad that they allowed you to bring something, and you don't want to disappoint all your new friends. Thank goodness, the alfajores were a hit.

We had to leave about 15 minutes after dessert was served, and when one of our new friends asked "Oh no, are you leaving already?", I apologized, and said we really had to. He quickly followed up with "You're not taking THE COOKIES, are you?" I assured him that no, the cookies would remain. He was very relieved.

I found my alfajores recipe the way I always find new recipes for ethnic dishes these days (see also lamb keema, chiles en nogada). I Googled for recipes and asked for suggestions on Twitter, read through about a dozen options, and decided on the one I thought sounded best. In this case, it was from Big World, Small Kitchen, and it was shortbread-like, with cornstarch and a little brandy.

 

Now, I'm not going to tell you this is an easy dough. This is a dough where temperature matters. If you don't chill where the recipe says chill, and work quickly to cut out the circles and put them on your baking sheet, you will in fact be sorry. Warmed up, the dough gets all mushy and sticky and very hard to work with. You also need a lot of flour on the cutting board to prevent sticking, but the more flour you use on the board, the tougher the cookies will get when you re-roll scraps. So, it's a delicate dance. But... an even more delicate cookie, and thoroughly worth it.

The chilled dough:

cookiebar 2011: bring on the world peace

I should have known what was happening last week when I suddenly started to get hits on this year-old report on Dorie Greenspan's CookieBar pop-up.

They're baaa-ack.

Sandwiched neatly between Groundhog Day and Valentine's Day (just like last year), Dorie Greenspan and her son Josh are selling some of the city's greatest cookies out of -- yes -- a hair salon.

And those cookies are glorious.

 

Most of the same cookies are available again, with a few tweaks. This year they added Jammers, a shortbread-jam-crumble concoction that rejiggers pie proportions into a perfect little balanced cookie, tender and crumbly and buttery and just sweet enough. There's a pear-pineapple option or the one we tried, strawberry-raspberry.

 

And of course there are Chunkers. OF COURSE.

 

And the one so glorious it's right up there in the title: World Peace.

 

Get 'em while the gettin's good. Cash-only. Open through this Friday, February 11, in the Mizu hair salon, Park at 59th. Each day they start at 10 and go 'til the cookies are gone.

My guess is that's going to happen faster and faster every day.

 

an oldie but a coney

I've had this blog for several years now (wow!) and while a lot of things have changed (font! layout! photography style!) some things haven't.

 
National Coney Island still mails Coney Kits, and we still chow down on the contents, cheerfully.

 
For more about coney dogs and why they mean so much to my Michigan-connected family, check out this post from 2008.

guest post! partridge in a pear tree

Jael here -- I cannot tell you how SUPER excited I am to have a guest post on the Simmer blog, and most importantly, THIS guest: my mother Lynnea. She's an inspiring woman, an impressive project manager (see below), and a really phenomenal cook. I'm thrilled to be able to have her speak to you directly with her own words and pictures about a recent charity dinner, and a recipe you'll want to file away for next Christmas -- if you can wait that long...

---------------------------

In our home the Christmas tree always stayed up until at least January 6, which we referred to as Ukrainian Christmas in honor of my immigrant grandparents who would have followed the Julian calendar. Even by today’s calendar, it makes sense when you realize that December 25th is really just the first day of Christmas. You can extend the season by celebrating the 12 days of Christmas and then Epiphany, when the Magi are said to have brought gifts to the Christ Child. (Besides, it gives us a reason to postpone putting the decorations away.)

This year I used the season as an occasion to organize a fund-raising dinner to help support the programs and ministries of our church. Using The 12 Days of Christmas song as a theme, our team of eight prepared a 12-course meal served at a beautiful neighborhood bed & breakfast. We began with 12 Drummers Drumming -- coconut-crusted wild-caught Alaskan salmon “drumsticks” served with a pineapple yogurt dipping sauce -- and ended with A Partridge in a Pear Tree, a deconstructed roasted pear tarte tatin with ricotta almond gelato. 

 
(forgive the blur)

The fun part was planning the menu around the theme; the challenge was coordination and timing. One thing that could be made a couple of weeks ahead was the pastry for the deconstructed tart, which I froze and reheated briefly before serving.

My favorite recipe for pastry crust is the one my mother makes, from an old Betty Crocker recipe. It uses milk and oil and can always be pressed together if you have trouble rolling it out. For eight small tart shells, add about ½ teaspoon of salt to a cup of all purpose flour. Pour 2 T. vegetable oil and 1 T. milk into a cup (don’t stir). Pour all at once into the flour and stir with a fork. I find I have better luck if I’m a little generous with the liquids. It should look like this:

 

 
Press into a ball and roll out between waxed paper. To suggest a partridge wing, I placed sliced almonds on the bottom of the individual buttered tart pan:

 
I cut the pastry to fit, brushed the crust with a bit of sugar syrup, and turned the crust over into the pan, pricked it with a fork, and baked at 450 for about 7 minutes.

best bites in portland: a PDX top 10

So, as I mentioned at the beginning of the week, my husband and I intended to spend just a few days in Portland, Oregon, over the Christmas holidays. The plan was to come home Sunday, but then our Sunday flight got cancelled. And then our Tuesday flight got cancelled.

And then we said what the heck, and spent the rest of the week getting unabashedly fat on Portland.

We finally went home that Saturday, heavier and wiser and pretty seriously acquainted with one of America's best food cities. Yum.

Top ten things we tasted:

• chicken wings at Pok Pok. I thought I had read about this restaurant in Food & Wine ages and ages ago, but it turns out "ages and ages" was 2009 (it had to have been this article), so I'm a little unclear on the timeline. Oops. What I'm not unclear on is the sweet hot sticky perfection of these wings, and I don't even generally order wings. Everything we had at Pok Pok (boar collar, catfish on vermicelli, half a chili crab) was absolutely delicious, and this was the best of the lot. 
• crispy potatoes at Gruner. I guess they have a longer name on the menu: "fried smashed Yellow Finn potatoes, special sauce." Not sure what makes the sauce special, other than its heavy helping of awesome. But this came recommended by a local, and I might have passed it up otherwise, and thank goodness that didn't happen. Because this was a thing of joy. Joy and cardiac danger.
• bacon maple bar at Voodoo Doughnut. Yes, it's the famous maple-bacon donut. Yes, it's that good. Yes, it's totally worth it, especially if you split it with a friend. Stand in line in the rain, then walk half a block down to Stumptown. Chances are you won't be the only one there with a pink Voodoo box in hand.

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!