the SIMMER blog

italian chicken meatballs

So, about that new leaf thing.

It's going well. And with a few iterations, a few experiments, it's amazing how quickly a just-okay dish becomes a real victory. Plus, with a few practice runs, I get faster and faster, so my weeknight repertoire expands to embrace things I might have previously considered too time-consuming or fussy.

Like, let's say, meatballs.

I love meatballs. The tiny little lamb meatballs I make as tapas, especially. And the more traditional kind, beef with breadcrumbs, that cook for hours in a Sunday gravy. But for health reasons and speed reasons, ground chicken is on hand more often than not, so that's what I've been experimenting with. And I've gotten it down to a science.

 
No binders, no breadcrumbs, no egg, no nothing. Just ground chicken mixed with a very generous helping of seasonings -- a mix of dried Italian herbs like basil and oregano, plus sriracha, garlic powder, black pepper, Worchestershire sauce, and red pepper flakes. And I mix it by hand right in the container it came in (take that padded lining thingy out first) and then pinch and roll the meatballs and drop them directly into the hot pan, working quickly enough that by the time the last meatball is in, it's time to turn over the first one.

itty bitty lobster rolls

One of the things I really enjoy is making humble ingredients taste amazing. But, as I am a Gemini and full of contradictions, I also really enjoy going nuts with the luxury ingredients from time to time. Which is how this happened:

 

Super-fresh lobster. Dispatched (eek!), cooked and cleaned by yours truly.

 
(Yes, it's a lot of work, and it's messy, but from time to time, you just gotta go for it.)

So I took the meat from the tails, claws, knuckles, and legs (Thomas Keller has a great trick for this in the Ad Hoc cookbook -- it involves a rolling pin and works like a charm) and cut it in pieces, not too small.

Then I sliced up a brioche loaf from Bouchon Bakery (also pretty luxe) and toasted in butter. On both sides. Because that's how we roll... when people are coming over. (When we are by ourselves, sometimes we just saute a chicken breast and call it good. Gotta have balance.)

The lobster meat I mixed with just a little mayo, lemon juice, tarragon and/or parsley if you've got it, and pepper. Not too much of any one. Let the lobsterness be the main thing.

For serving, just pile the meat on the toasts. They're best if the toasts are warm and the meat is chilled, but even if everything's room temp, I don't think your guests are going to pass them by. Ours disappeared in a wink.

 
I also tried a mix with celery leaves instead of herbs, and I think I like that even better. But really, the specifics are up to you. Just use a light hand, taste as you go, and you can't go wrong.

 
Lovely and luxurious.

cheesecake ice cream

I don't know what the weather's like where you are, but here in New York City, we have rapidly gone from a foggy, rainy, wintry spring to the WHOA THAT IS HOT heat of summer.

Which has its downsides, obviously. And its upsides too:

 
It means that every dinner party around here ends with ice cream. (Which happens sometimes in the winter, too, but is oh-so-much-better in the summer.)

I think I've mentioned before that one of the things I love about The Perfect Scoop is its wealth of non-custard ice creams. No fussy egg-cookery, just easier-than-pie purees.

This one is just cream cheese, sour cream, lemon zest, a little half-and-half, and sugar:

 

Which you hit with your whirrr stick:

 

Done. Chill for a bit, then churn.

 

As is so often the case, no pictures of the finished product, because we chowed it down. And I apologize for the lousy lighting throughout this post. But would you rather have poorly-lit cheesecake ice cream photos, or no cheesecake ice cream photos at all?

Make this one. You will not be sorry.

shortbread shortcut

One of the earliest recipes in The Kitchen Daughter is Grandma Damson's Scottish Shortbread. There are a kajillion recipes for shortbread, most of which work fine, but I made this one very simple on purpose. Two cups of flour, two sticks of butter, and a half-cup of sugar. That's all. Ginny does it the old-fashioned way, working the butter into the sugar by hand, and that's the way I'd usually done it as well.

Until last week.

 

Yep, that's a food processor. I was in a rush to crank out some cookies for book club, which I was hosting, and so I decided to use my stand mixer -- except in the close quarters of my kitchen, the stand mixer is currently behind the food processor, so I thought, Eh, I've heard people sometimes use the food processor for doughs and crusts, I guess I'll give it a shot.

Wow. What a shot it was.

 

I made only a half-batch -- so first I creamed a stick of cold butter (salted) with a quarter-cup of granulated sugar, then blitzed in a cup of flour, until the mixture resembled coarse crumbs.

 

Time elapsed? Like, nothing. Maybe literally two minutes. And then there was another time-saving discovery to make: if I patted the crust out on my synthetic cutting board and only rolled it lightly, instead of flouring a wooden board and rolling it thin, I didn't have to worry about the butter melting and making the dough hard to work. It came together in a flash. Pat pat pat:

how to make a georgia peach

New feature on the Simmer blog today: video! The fabulous crew at Simon and Schuster worked with me on a couple of cooking videos for recipes from The Kitchen Daughter, and here's the first: how to make a Georgia Peach.

 

Enjoy!

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:

blessed are the cheesemakers

Buckle up, friends! This is a do-it-yourselfer the likes of which we haven't seen around these parts since that whole duck prosciutto episode.

Since two of my favorite things in the world are a) making things from scratch that are readily available for sale elsewhere and b) cheese, you may be surprised it has taken me this long to make cheese in my own kitchen. But honestly, for most cheeses, it's kind of a crazy undertaking. You have to buy rennet or curds, there's often aging involved, and it certainly isn't a cost savings. But when I went to the Astor Center class on pizza-making a few months back, I happened to get a little hands-on cheesemaking experience as well.

We made mozzarella and ricotta in class. For the mozz, you buy the curds from Murray's, but all you need to make ricotta is milk and acid (like lemon juice, or vinegar). And then imagine my joy when I found this on Serious Eats: directions for doing it in the microwave. Yes, part of the joy of doing it yourself is tackling the process, but if the shortcut produces results that are just as good, I'm all for it.

So. Whole milk. Salt. Into the Pyrex. I made one batch with vinegar, but it's slightly more photogenic to make it with lemon. (More on the lemon thing in a sec.) Like so: 

 

Pop the liquid into the microwave and rig up a strainer with a few extra layers of paper towels:

 

As you heat it, the acid pulls the milk solids into curds -- tiny, tiny ones -- and things start to separate. (Yours won't have the black specks; I used truffle salt just for fun, but the flavor didn't really come through, so salt-salt is a better call.)

improvised white bean soup with saffron

Sometimes, things just come together.

Shells left over from a pound of shrimp, simmered for half an hour and then strained to make stock.

Leftover fennel, sliced thin but not too thin.

A can of white beans from the cupboard.

A little leftover cream. 

A spoon.

 
For spices I dropped in whole coriander (not a good idea with supermarket coriander, but it works with the stuff from Kalustyan's -- if yours is more rigid, crack it or use powdered) and saffron.

 
Surprisingly full-flavored, considering the short list of ingredients. But there's something about the way these particular tastes and textures came together that really excelled. I made it for me, on a whim, but next time I'll make it for other people, on purpose.

 

Delicious.

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...

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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.

semi-Mexican gougeres

Mmmm, gougeres. Silky, fluffy, rich, and crispy, all at once. You melt butter in water on the stove, mix in some flour and beat in eggs one at a time, dump spoonfuls onto a sheet pan, and twentyish minutes later, you've got an hors d'oeuvre that doesn't need to be babysat. Perfect for any occasion.

Except when you're making them to serve with an ostensibly Mexican meal, including pumpkinseed molé, rice, and chiles en nogada. Oops.

But, if neither you nor your friends really want to make a big issue out of authenticity, you add two things to a regular gougere batter -- fresh raw corn and diced jalapenos -- and then you call it a day. A cheesy, silky, fluffy, rich, chow-em-down day.

Batter up:

 
Magically delicious:

 
And on the inside:

 
Ah, just rip it wide open for a better view:

 

Want a recipe? I left the bacon out (shocking, I know!) and added one seeded, very finely diced jalapeno to this recipe from Gourmet. I also reduced the amount of corn to one ear and didn't cook the kernels before adding to the batter.

(And of course I left out the chives. Chives are pretty much always optional, right?)