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!

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!

 

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.

 

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.)

 

apricot and cherry kaiserschmarrn

Okay, so, before stumbling across this recipe in Food & Wine, I had never in my life heard the word kaiserschmarrn. But it sounded pretty tasty, and stone fruit is very much in season, and I thought it'd go pretty well with the sweet corn ice cream I had planned, so I figured I'd give it a whirl.

Of course the market dictated a few changes -- the apricots looked better than the peaches, and ditto the cherries over the blackberries -- and a lot of this had to be done at the last minute, making it not an ideal choice for dinner. Then again, it serves at least six people (we served it to eight) so it's a bit much if you don't have a big group over.

And how pretty are these little guys?

 

Cook the apricots in butter, sugar and lemon juice just until they soften:

 

Ditto with the cherries:

corn dinner part 1: sweet corn ice cream

Yes, it's telling the whole story out of order to talk first about the last course of a dinner -- but, to be fair, I did make the ice cream first. I usually do. Which is one of the most awesome things about making ice cream for a dinner party. Get it done and out of the way the day before (which leaves you plenty of time to sweat about the other things.)

So I used this great recipe from Always Order Dessert, just as written. Unfortunately, I didn't get gorgeous pictures of the finished product like Alexandra did, but here are a couple of process photos.

Corn steeping in milk and cream:

 

Slicing the steeped corn off the cob afterward:

 

 

Straining the liquid to take out all the solid bits:

 

Verdict: delicious stuff. Next time I might try doing a custard-based ice cream, as this one wasn't quite as rich as my favorites, but it certainly went well with its pairing partner, an apricot and cherry pancake called a kaiserschmarrn. (About which more tomorrow.)

 

 

stuffed squash blossoms

So on my farmer's market run for the 5-course corn dinner this past weekend, I noticed a very reasonably priced package of squash blossoms, and I said to myself, "Self: you should pick these up and maybe you could add them to the menu if time permits."

My response probably should have been, "Ha, Self, you ridiculous fool! You know you're always cooking right up to the last minute, you overambitious dinner party menu planner, you. The chances of you having 'extra' time is downright laughable."

I bought the blossoms, and I didn't have the chance to use them at the party, but they were a perfect vehicle for a wonderful mishmash of dinner party leftovers. So, let's call that success!

I wiped them off with a wet paper towel to remove dirt and a bug or two, and laid them out at the ready. And then I concocted a leftover-driven stuffing that I will never in a million years be able to replicate*, but here's the full ingredient list to give you the basic idea:

• about half a cup of fresh ricotta
• some shredded parm
• shredded, cooked golden zucchini with onion and garlic (probably half a cup-ish)
• a quarter-cup or so of crumbled queso fresco
• a tablespoon of mascarpone just to smooth/bind everything
• a quarter-cup of sauteed, chopped mushrooms
• a tablespoon of the leftover corn solids from making corn ice cream (* told you)
• black pepper

 And then I spooned the stuffing into the blossoms, and twisted them neatly at the top to close.

 

And while most squash blossom recipes I've seen call for breading and frying, for health reasons I decided to just saute unbreadded blossoms instead, and I have to say, I think it was totally the right call.

chicken scarpariello

Time for some more healthy cooking experiments!

So as fairly devout watchers of "Best Thing I Ever Ate", we here Chez Simmer were excited to see a new crop of episodes start appearing on the DVR back in June. And on one hand, you can sort of see how they're starting to stretch themselves thin, but on the other hand, there really are always new places out there, and the nicest thing about being a home cook is that you don't even necessarily have to travel to be inspired by the show. You can take inspiration from what they're doing, and bring it into your own kitchen.

So is this the chicken scarpariello that Anne Burrell raved about having at Rao's in Vegas? Not really. But is there now a chicken scarpariello we rave about having here at home? There sure is.

 
Seriously, I've made it about four times now, and unfortunately I didn't document every little step, so you're left with these pictures of one of the iterations, which was not the absolute final version we loved.

 
But it gives you the basic idea. Now, if you want the official Rao's version, you can find the recipe here, which involves bone-in chicken and a pretty large batch size.

What we ended up with in the final supertasty iteration:

• surprisingly, boneless skinless chicken breasts cut into cubes instead of larger skin-on bone-in chicken pieces. Yes, the bone imparts some flavor, but it means a longer cooking time, less flavor penetration into the meat, and a much messier eating experience. Plus that whole health thing. And as long as the liquid isn't allowed to boil too vehemently, the white meat stayed decently tender.
• regular sweet red peppers were $6.99 a pound at the store. Cubanelle peppers (mild, pale green) were $2.99. I bought cubanelles. They rocked.
• cut up the cherry peppers instead of leaving them whole.
• keep the liquid minimal, and go heavy on the brine.
• actually, add extra brine at the end.
• and then let it sit in the fridge an extra day. Seriously.

The sour tang of the cherry pepper brine really gives this a neat flavor profile, especially when it has that extra day to soak in. As you can tell, I thought serving it with quinoa and green beans was a fine idea, although it was also good served in a deep bowl as more of a stew.

Best thing I ever ate? Maybe not. Best chicken scarpariello I ever ate? Darn tootin'. 

easy tapas: piquillo confit

Okay, so, don't even worry about that "confit" in the title. That makes it sound all fancy. Maybe when you serve this, if you're trying to impress people, you trot out the fancy word. But if you're cooking it, it's more like "you take some peppers out of a jar and you cook them a long time without even touching them and something MAGICAL happens."

 
Thank you, Jose Andres.

So the only thing you need to worry about with this recipe is finding the piquillo peppers. Regular sweet red peppers just aren't the same. I usually track down my piquillos at Trader Joe's or Whole Foods, and keep a couple jars on hand. And even though I absolutely love to make tapas (mainly because I love to eat them, and because I continue to be profoundly, persistently bad at estimating quantities) I had never turned to this recipe in Jose Andres' "Tapas" cookbook before, simply because I also like to stuff piquillos with goat cheese as a make-ahead appetizer-type tapa, and serving two different preparations of the same pepper didn't really seem like the right way to go.

But now, having made these? I will be making them again every single time the opportunity presents itself.

First, you just lay down a layer of peppers in an ovenproof dish.

 

Then you puree a couple more peppers with some water.

 
Chop up a few cloves of garlic, and spread half the puree over the layer of peppers, and scatter half the garlic over that.

 
Then you repeat: another layer of peppers, another layer of puree and garlic.

Oh, and then you pour olive oil all over it.