Tomato Kumato

December 3, 2009

La Sidreria

Filed under: Beef — Tags: — emiglia @ 5:06 pm

I’m sorry it’s been so long. Please say that steak makes up for it.

I am still in Paris, but I’m so overloaded with work, I hardly know what to do with myself. I’ve taken to riding the bus the wrong way on purpose, just to have some time to think, before finally getting off the bus somewhere near St. Paul and dragging myself onto my bus to ride it all the way home, where I devote myself to lesson plans, concept questions and trying to figure out why my teacher uses the word galvanizing so often.

It’s strange to be back in school, especially when I was convinced just a few months ago that it would be years before I went back, if I went back at all. It’s even stranger, though, to think that just a little bit less than a month ago, I was still in Spain. I spoke Spanish… it’s been weeks since I uttered a word of Spanish. I was still surfing every day and spending my nights drinking cider. Oh, that I had the time to spend my nights drinking cider.

In San Sebastian, the sidreria, the cider house, while perhaps not as internationally well known as the other specialty of pintxos, is, regardless, an important staple of the gastronomy. January is prime cider time, and the barrels lining the walls of these massive restaurants are filled with the freshly made bubbly drink.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have the opportunity to be in San Sebastian during the cider season. Fortunately, I knew several people who knew of sidrerias that were still serving the classic meal, and so I went twice: once at the beginning of my trip and once at the end.

As you can see from the photos, the meal is always the same: served family-style, each table receives sausage, omelette, bacalao with green peppers, txuleton (that would be the steak), and sheepsmilk cheese with membrillo and walnuts. And, of course, unlimited cider.

And pretty much unlimited everything else as well.

Cider is served by the customer: you fill your glass as you see fit from the taps on the wall, and if you hear the call txotxe! you’re expected to run to the taps with everyone else to fill your glass and down it. It’s a very amusing thing to watch, and even more amusing to participate.

Just typing this now, I can’t help but be struck with disbelief. Disbelief of the fact that it’s already been a month since I left Spain, and disbelief of the fact that it’s only been a month. Disbelief of the fact that it’s been so long since I posted on here, or since I had time to make anything more exciting than stewed lentils for myself as an evening meal and chicken and mustard sandwiches for lunch.

But school is temporary. Work is temporary. My Internet silence, for better or for worse, is temporary. I miss this blog, but I know that it will be waiting for me when my life no longer revolves around making flashcards and telling people, “You can say it, but I understand something different.”

Food is forever, for food is tradition. If I’ve learned anything since moving to Europe, I’ve learned that. Food cannot be rushed: I know more Parisians than I would care to admit who would rather chain-smoke a pack of cigarettes than eat a rushed meal. And that’s their decision. For me, it’s a strange balance between the food I want to make and the food I have time to make, the things I want and need to write and the things that I know I will write someday, that hide out as little blips of ideas on the backs of the worksheets I make.

Radio silence isn’t over yet, I’m sorry to say, but until it is, I leave you with apples.

Note: Thanksgiving has come and gone, with no word from me, and for that I apologize. I actually did have the time to make and serve not one but TWO extremely intense Thanksgiving dinners. I just haven’t had the energy to scrape myself off the floor and post about them. Look for it this weekend, my first weekend in the past three that I have NOT made upwards of four pies.

September 9, 2009

Steaks with Parsley Sauce

Filed under: Beef — Tags: , , — emiglia @ 12:29 pm

I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy to do something I’m so bad at.

I’m not talking about cooking: I was never bad at cooking. I was insecure, I had things I couldn’t make, but everything went along a learning curve, and for someone who was teaching themselves using Epicurious as her only guide and nonstick pans bought from a place called Honest Ed’s in Toronto, I think I learned pretty quickly.

I’m talking about surfing.

For those of you who read this blog and know that I tend to gallavant from one exotic place to another without much regard for the real world at all, it may come as a shock that I have certain travel dreams that I have yet to conquer.

For example, I’ve always wanted to work a ski season at a mountain (preferably Okemo in Ludlow, VT, but I’m not picky). I imagined working all day and skiing as soon as I got off work… it seemed like perfection.

I’ve also always wanted to go work on an organic farm for a few months. There’s a program that sends volunteers to different farms in different countries, and from the moment I read about it in the Herald Tribune three years ago, “milking carrots in Argentina,” as I jokingly refer to it with the English One, has been on my radar.

The last: surfing. I know that most people have some sort of repressed urge to move to Hawaii and surf all day, but because my travel dreams have always been able to become my reality, I never really suppressed it, and now I have my chance.

I mentioned yesterday that I’m currently in San Sebastian: I’ll be here for two months, surfing and learning Spanish. I started surf lessons two days ago, and as much as I tried to talk myself into loving it as I walked down to the surf school, part of me would worry that my dream would not be all that it was cracked up to be, that I would try and fail and move on, as I tend to do (I’m not proud of it, but there it is, and why have a blog if not to tell the truth to total strangers).

But surprisingly, at least to me, I fell immediately in love with it: like my favorite childhood sport of boogie boarding, only ten times more fun and ten times more tiring–after an hour of trying to stand and falling, I was exhauted, but I had done it.

And, with the sort of lousy lead-in that we food bloggers are, every so often, guilty of using, I present something else that I used to do poorly but that I loved anyway: steak. More precisely, steak with parsley sauce, similar to an Argentinian chimichurri, but I took too much liberty to really call it that. It’s spicy and garlicky and fresh, and I understand now, after hours and hours spent in the sun, why the Argentians, with their warm weather, decide to top their steaks with something so fresh and green and bright.

Steaks with Parsley Sauce
1 large bunch of fresh flat leaf parsley, washed, stemmed, and dried
4 cloves of garlic, peeled
1 shallot, minced
1 small carrot, grated
2 Tbsp. lemon juice
2 Tbsp. lime juice
1 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. dried oregano
1/2 tsp. Peri-Peri sauce or your favorite hot sauce
1/2 tsp. black pepper
about 1 cup extra virgin olive oil (I tend to need a bit less)

Place all ingredients except olive oil into the bowl of a food processor. Pulse until combined but not too smooth. Add the olive oil in a stream and pulse the entire mixture until it comes together as a rough sauce.

Serve with your favorite steaks. The rest of the sauce makes a great dip, pasta sauce or topping for anything from chicken to burgers! Store it as you would pesto, with a thin layer of oil over the top to keep the color green.

July 3, 2009

A la bolognaise

Filed under: Beef, Carnivorous Main Dishes, Pasta — Tags: , , — emiglia @ 2:06 am

It’s incredible what a difference a year makes.

A year ago, I was in Paziols, but the similarities end there.

A year ago, Alex and I weren’t together. A year ago, I was still in school. A year ago, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life.

Well… I guess I still don’t. But I’m working on it. I’m not in a hurry.

That’s what the South does to you: something I had forgotten since I knew it so well a year ago, when so much of my time was still spent back and forth on the train to Cannes for weekends at the beach and nights out in my favorite Irish pub–a pub so incredible with staff that were such good friends that I thought nothing of riding the train five hours just to be able to sit at the bar and have a pint.

But I’m not in Cannes, or even in Provence. I am in the South–in Paziols. Third time’s the charm, or so they say, but everything about my life in Paziols–the three summers I’ve spent living in this old house and watching it change and evolve before my eyes–has been charming: the third year is just that… one more year of being here, in what Anne-Marie has always told us to call our “home” in France.

And it does feel like a home–after so long of not having one, I had forgotten what it feels like to be so completely right in a place: not just in an apartment, like in Paris, or in a town you know like the back of your hand, like our summer house in Westhampton, but a place that has everything: a town, a house, a built-in family.

I do the cooking here now that Patricia is gone, and that makes this feel even more like my house, as I put together menus and call on the kids as though they were my own siblings to help me wash vegetables and chop tomatoes and carry platters laden with salads and potatoes and meat to the table where the rest of them sit waiting. It’s nothing like any camp experience I had when growing up: they all know, even after having been here for less than 48 hours, that we’re a family, that this is their home too.

A year ago, it wasn’t like this–not really. It may have been because it was still so new for all of us, even the staff. It may have been because the group we have this year is chomping at the bit to be let out into the green pastures of vines that sprawl on all sides, to ask constantly, “Comment dit-on…” How do you say…

How do you say what it is I want to say? Even I don’t know, and I’ve been mulling it over for days as I sleep beneath an opened window and listen to crickets chirp and wait for the midnight crow of the rooster who’s either confused or running on his own schedule, as the South tends to do.

They love it. I can tell they do. I could tell from the moment I listened in on their conversation at the airport–three girls who had never met before, talking about how great it would be when they were fluent. They reminded me of myself, and that, in and of itself, made me smile.

I don’t know why this is so different from what it was a year ago. A year ago, none of this was real for me, but this year, it couldn’t be more real.

Spaghetti à la bolognaise (serves 20)

2 Tbsp. butter
2 Tbsp. olive oil
2 onions
2 carrots
2 stalks of celery
200 g. lardons
1.8 kilo ground beef
430 g. tomato coulis
765 g. canned whole tomatoes
1 glass wine
2 cups milk

Mince the carrots, onion and celery. Melt the oil and butter together in a skillet and slowly cook the vegetables over medium heat until tender. Season generously with salt.

Push the vegetables to the side and add the lardons. Cook until golden.

Pull the vegetables back into the middle of the skillet and mix with the lardons. Push the mixture back to the sides of the slillet and add the meat in small amounts, browning well before pushing it to the side as well.

Prepare a large stock pot with a lid. When the skillet grows too full, scoop the vegetables and meat out with a slotted spoon and keep warm in the stock pot. Continue frying the meat in the skillet and transferring it, as need be, to the pot. When all the meat is cooked, remove the skillet from the heat and place the stock pot over a low flame.

Add the wine and the milk, and bring to a boil. Add the tomatoes and mix to combine. Reduce the flame back to low and cover. Cook for 2-4 hours, stirring occasionally. Season with more salt as needed and serve with spaghetti. Keeps well in the fridge to serve hungry campers for lunch.


April 3, 2009

Spaghetti and Meatballs

Filed under: Beef, Pasta, Pork — Tags: , , , — emiglia @ 1:40 pm

I have a list of foods that I do not, under any circumstances, cook.

Mostly, it’s because I had a poor experience making them when I first started cooking in Toronto: hamburgers, latkes, wheatberries, meatballs.

For a little while, tomato sauce was on this list: I couldn’t help making it taste sour.

But tomato sauce came off the list, and now, spaghetti and meatballs are off the list as well.

Spaghetti and meatballs is one of my true comfort meals: something that I wish I had around all the time in case I was in a bad mood and just needed a big bowl of something awesome. My mom’s meatballs, truthfully, are not the best I’ve ever had. The best I’ve ever had were eaten at Carmine’s, a New York institution, where the portions are much larger than any human should ever even attempt to eat, but the food is so tasty that you end up trying anyway.

These meatballs were fall-apart tender and moist, almost braised in a bright red, perfectly flavorful tomato sauce. In keeping with the theme of large portions, Carmine’s meatballs are massive, about the size of a softball. They’re my ultimate meatball, and I spent many evenings in Toronto on the phone with my mother trying to figure out how to make my meatballs taste like that. Instead, I always ended up with hard craters that had huge chunks of onion sticking out of them that fall apart, but not in the good way: mine crumble.

I had resigned myself to being a horrid meatball maker, counting down the days until the next time I could visit Carmine’s and have one of their pillowy meatballs… until I saw this.

I had made the Bolognese sauce at FX Cuisine before and swooned. It was everything a Bolognese sauce should be. When I saw the recipe for spaghetti and meatballs, I considered it: could it be? Could I maybe make a meatball that even came close to the Holy Grail of a Carmine’s meatball?

Alas, there was no real recipe, and I almost decided against it, but then… the leftover meat from the Daring Bakers’ lasagna was still sitting in my fridge waiting to be used… so I went for it.

And I’m so glad I did. These meatballs are everything you could ask for in a meatball and more: they’re light, melt-in-your-mouth tender, and perfectly flavorful and delicious. The real key is the milk-soaked bread. If I didn’t know it was there, I wouldn’t have been able to pick it out, but I know that those little pockets of moisture came from that.

They’re not the softballs of Carmine’s, but, in my opinion, they were just as delicious.

I’ve assembled a more exact recipe from the guidelines provided at FX Cuisine. Whether you decide to go with his recipe or mine, these meatballs are definitely worth trying.

Spaghetti and Meatballs (adapted from FX Cuisine)

1 tbsp. olive oil
350 gm 20% fat raw ground beef
130 gm Italian sausage
260 gm raw veal, sliced into strips
1 slice bread (I used a quarter of a loaf of French bread), very dry and stale
milk
2 tbsp grated Parmesan cheese
1 egg
1 tsp. dried basil
1 tsp. dried oregano
1 clove garlic, minced
1 28 oz. can whole tomatoes
700 gm passata
salt and pepper to taste

Heat the olive oil in a large, heavy-bottomed pot, and add the veal. Brown on all sides evenly, and then add the tomatoes and passata, adding salt and pepper to taste. Allow to cook on a low temperature, uncovered, while you prepare the meatballs.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Soak the bread in milk, a few tablespoons at a time, until soggy and falling apart. Into the same bowl, add the ground beef, sausage, cheese, egg, basil, oregano and garlic. Add salt and pepper to taste. Combine with your hands, handling the meat as gently as possible, working all the ingredients together.

Using one hand, portion out a small amount of the meat: about the size of a golf ball. Gently work it into a sphere and place it on a greased baking sheet. Continue this way until all the meat is used up: I ended up with twenty meatballs. Place the sheet in the oven, and bake until just browned on the outside, about ten minutes.

Using a spoon, gently lower the meatballs into the sauce. Allow to cook until cooked through, anywhere from fifteen to forty-five minutes. Serve over freshly cooked pasta with extra parmesan cheese for sprinkling.

March 29, 2009

Daring Bakers: Lasagne Verdi al Forno

Filed under: Beef, Carnivorous Main Dishes, Daring Bakers, Pasta, Pork — Tags: , — emiglia @ 3:02 pm

The March 2009 challenge is hosted by Mary of Beans and Caviar, Melinda of Melbourne Larder and Enza of Io Da Grande. They have chosen Lasagne of Emilia-Romagna from The Splendid Table by Lynne Rossetto Kasper as the challenge.

I was so excited that my very first Daring Bakers’ Challenge was something savory: I joined the Daring Bakers because I really do want to challenge myself, but if you take a look at some of the monstrous cakes the Bakers have made in the past, you’ll understand why I was a little bit nervous.

The lasagna was no easy task either: we had to make a ragu, homemade spinach pasta and homemade béchamel.


In the end, I found that all of the tasks were fairly simple. Yes, the ragu has to cook for hours before it’s ready to eat, and yes, the pasta requires a lot of rolling. But I paced myself and made the ragu separately a few days in advance. I had already made béchamel several times for other recipes, so it was quite simple as well.

That just left the pasta recipe, but in the end, I just asked myself why I didn’t make homemade pasta more often.

Especially now that it’s all gone.

I love the flecks of spinach in the homemade pasta!
I made half of the pasta recipe provided but I made all of the ragu and béchamel. I ended up making much thicker layers than were called for in the recipe: I used three layers of pasta and I used up all of the béchamel. Some ragú was left, so I tossed it with the leftover pasta.

They ate all of it.

Alex swooned and started telling people on the phone that I made homemade lasagna “à la main,” and then my friend Matt came over and finished it off.

As for me? I loved it. It’s definitely in the top two lasagne I’ve ever had in my life, and the fact that there were no artificial flavorings and everything was made by hand makes it shoot up to number one in my book.

I’ll definitely be making it again… but this time I’m making a bigger batch.

The recipe is available here.

Please, don’t be scared off by fresh pasta like I was: try this recipe. Your loved ones will thank you for it… with their mouths full.

March 16, 2009

Alex’s Birthday

Filed under: Beef, Cakes, Carnivorous Main Dishes, Muffins and Cupcakes, Pasta — Tags: , , — emiglia @ 7:21 am

I have a problem.

I write one post a day, usually. Sometimes, I don’t write a post at all. But I make dinner every day. And lunch most days. And pretty much everything I make is something that I want to blog about, otherwise I wouldn’t have made it. Throw in the fact that I worked for a month, during which I barely had the energy to eat what I had made, much less blog about it (ugh… remind me never to work again), and you have quite an archive of unblogged recipes.

This, of course, is how I end up blogging about Alex’s birthday, which is at the beginning of February, more than halfway through March.

This meal was definitely blog-worthy. After discussing whether we wanted to take his friends out on the town, we decided we would much prefer having a party at home. This, of course, meant that I was cooking. After Alex made a series of odd requests, like “meat cake” (which I took to mean meatloaf, something he had never heard of but now desperately wants me to make), we settled on pasta with bolognese sauce. For me, of course, this was a challenge: I was going to make real Bolognese, and I was going to follow all the rules.

The recipe I followed is outlined, in detail, here, at FX Cuisine. A very large majority of the recipes on this site have made their way onto my list of things to try, but I’ve never attempted any of them before. They always look so gorgeous, but I’ve always been afraid that a) I’d mess them up, or b) they wouldn’t be worth the hours it takes to make them properly.

I needn’t have been afraid. (Wow… I just used needn’t in a sentence. Crazy.) I followed the recipe to the letter, chicken livers included (something I had never tried to use before, but I really liked in the sauce.) It was incredible, and everyone agreed. My only regret is that I didn’t make it for someone who truly appreciates slow-cooked Italian food, like my brother or my dad. Oh well… they’ll be getting a taste of the Neapolitan Meat Sauce soon enough… like next Christmas.

I think what my guests truly appreciated were the chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter frosting. I knew immediately that I would have to do something with peanut butter for Alex. I almost did something with Marshmallow Fluff too, a little piece of Americana that my Frenchman, somehow, absolutely adores, but I figured the rest of the French boys in my apartment wouldn’t take too kindly to liquid marshmallow in a jar. Instead, I went for this peanut butter and chocolate cake that Deb over at Smitten Kitchen made for her Alex for his birthday. I decided to make it in cupcake form, because big things like roasts and cakes scare me.

The cupcakes were a huge success (although this is the embarrassing excuse for a picture of the final product that I found on my camera… this is what happens when I try to tackle Bolognese and cake in the same afternoon). I’ll have to try the full cake someday, when I’m not so scared.

This is chocolate peanut butter ganache.

It is incredible in every sense of the word.

March 15, 2009

Steak and Blue Cheese Sandwich

Filed under: Beef, Sandwiches, cheese — Tags: , , — emiglia @ 7:29 am

There are certain food combinations that, to me, seem timeless. No matter how much we advance in cooking, people always seem to be doing a riff off the same old thing: peanut butter and jelly, beets and goat cheese, eggs and bacon. The reason? It’s good!

When I create a new recipe, sometimes I try to venture far from my comfort zone: sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t. But after three years of cooking, I know what a sure thing looks like, and this sandwich was definitely it.

I pan-fried a steak quickly and then cut it into strips perpendicular to the grain, like you would with fajita meat. I took some good French bread and heated it up in the skillet, and then added a slab of blue cheese, some grilled red onions, and lots of steak. A simple sandwich, if ever there was one, and something that plays off of timeless flavors. Sometimes it’s nice to just throw something together and know it’s going to be delicious.

This is my entry for Lore’s Original Recipes Event over at Culinarty. It’s a great event that celebrates creating your own recipes… something that many of us around here do every day! I’m sliding in right at the end, but this event happens every month, so stop by and check out the rules, and think about trying it out next month.

Steak and Blue Cheese Sandwich

2 tsp. olive oil, separated
100 grams (about 3-4 ounces) steak, uncooked
French bread, split in half
enough blue cheese to spread over one side of the bread
1 small red onion, thinly sliced into half-moons
salt and pepper

Heat one of the teaspoons of olive oil in a pan. Add the red onion and cook until charred on the outside, about 3 minutes. Meanwhile, salt and pepper the steak on both sides.

Slide the onion to the side of the skillet to keep it warm. Add the other teaspoon of oil and cook the steak until medium rare. For a thin steak like the one I used, which you can see in the picture, I cooked it for about a minute per side.

Remove the steak from the skillet and allow it to rest. Meanwhile, place the bread open side down on the skillet to heat it up and allow it to soak up the flavor of the steak. Remove from the skillet and add the blue cheese and onions. You will probably have more than enough onion: I saved the rest and used it later on a salad. Cut the steak perpendicular to the grain of the meat, and pile it onto the bread. Enjoy!

I had extra steak too, but I didn’t save it… :)

March 6, 2009

Steak and Red Onion Quesadillas

Filed under: Beef, cheese — Tags: , , , , — emiglia @ 7:50 am

Up until this point, on my blog, I haven’t participated in too many food challenges. I’m not too sure why… maybe it’s because I always had so many food goals to achieve on my own that I didn’t feel like looking to see what other people were daring me to do.

Well, no more. After two challenges and two amazing new recipes, I am a convert.

I created this quesadilla recipe for Gloria’s tex-mex challenge over at Foods and Flavors of San Antonio. The best part? The event is in celebration of the publication of her new cookbook! Hearing that someone got a book published always feels like amazing news to me… maybe because it’s my dream. I feel the flood of emotions I imagine I’ll feel when (knock wood) someday I publish my own book every single time I hear about this accomplishment. Congratulations, Gloria!

On to the food…

This recipe is a combination of lean steak, mimolette cheese and red onions. All in all, it’s not really that bad for you, but with oozing cheese and red meat, it sure feels indulgent!

Mimolette cheese is classically a northern French cheese that comes from the area around Lille, right on the border between France and Belgium. The cheese is usually sold in wedges with the (inedible) hard rind attached. It’s also made in Belgium and the Netherlands, and the version I picked up is a Dutch cheese, and it’s packaged in slices like American singles are in the States. (The flavor is unquestionably better, as if that needed mentioning.) If you want to substitute another sharp orange cheese like cheddar, feel free.

The cut of steak I used is called tende de tranche in French. Because butchering is different in every country, I had quite an interesting time trying to figure out an American equivalent. Based on my research, this is called top round in English. Whatever it’s called, its a very lean cut that’s a little bit tough, so I prepared it as I would steak for fajitas, slicing it against the grain when it was done cooking.

I started by searing the steak on the outside on both sides with just a little salt and pepper as seasoning. I’d count about one minute per side if you want medium rare for such a thin cut. I cooked it a little longer, and as you can see from the pictures, I’m getting pretty close to well-done.

I like the color of red onions for this dish… I thought it was very pretty next to the rosy color of the beef and the bright orange of the cheese. Red onions are expensive, though, and if you’d rather caramelize some regular yellow onions, that’s cool too: it will take longer, but because you’re heating the beef up again with the quesadilla as a whole, I don’t see a problem.

So… without further ado… the recipe! Congrats once again to Gloria on this accomplishment!

Steak and Red Onion Quesadillas

2 flour tortillas
1 red onion, thinly sliced into half-moons 200 g. (two small steaks) of lean beef, like tende de tranche
2 slices mimolette or other sharp orange cheese
Tabasco sauce
salt and pepper
olive oil

Heat a skillet over high heat. Meanwhile, season the steaks on either side with salt and pepper. Add olive oil to the skillet and, when hot, add the steaks. Allow to cook for one minute on each side without moving to develop a nice, dark crust. Remove to a plate and allow to sit, covered, while you prepare the rest of the filling.

Reduce the heat under the skillet to medium, and add more oil if necessary. Add the onions with a pinch of salt, and stir. Let the onions cook until they have some color and are sweet, about 5-7 minutes. They will retain a bit of crunch, but they should lose all of their pungent aroma. Remove to the plate with the steak.

Slice the steak into strips along the bias.

Reduce the heat in the skillet once more to medium low. Tortillas can either be prepared one at a time in the skillet, or prepared outside the skillet and cooked at the same time… just be careful not to let the fillings fall out! For each quesadilla, start with one tortilla, opened. Season the inside of the tortilla with a few drops of Tabasco sauce, depending on individual tastes. Next add steak and onions, finishing with the cheese. Fold the tortillas in half. If you have prepared the tortillas outside the pan, start them steak side down, and then flip after about a minute and a half. If you have assembled the tortilla in the pan, simply close the top of the tortilla, and flip it to the other side. Cook until the cheese is melted. Serve with sour cream and guacamole, if desired.

March 3, 2009

An Announcement

Filed under: Beef, Side Dishes — Tags: , , — emiglia @ 5:32 am

I am finally back to the blogging world, and I have an announcement for all of you who have been waiting and praying I would come back (I know you’re out there, even if you are being awfully quiet…)

I am a full-time writer!

I know this is a decision that usually takes a lot of people years in the corporate world to come to, and as a 21-year old recent college grad, it may seem a little hasty on my part.

But after one month at what I have to admit was an awesome job, I realized that my heart wasn’t in it: writing is my first love, and I’ve known since I was very young that it was what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. I even sent at 20-page “novel” to the address on the back of a Penguin Classic when I was 12.

I’m mainly going to be focusing, once again, on novels, but I’ll also have a lot more time to update you all on what’s been going on in my kitchen. And let me tell you, a lot has been going on.

I moved into the BF’s place, and instead of paying rent, I am responsible for the food… I’m not really sure how I got such an awesome deal, but there you go. On top of everything, moving away from the touristy and expensive 7th arrondissement (a sort of Parisian equivalent of Carnegie Hill, financially anyway, for you New Yorkers) meant that I moved closer to where the “normal” people live in Paris. Amongst other things, this means that my grocery store is up to my American standards: whereas in my old Franprix I could barely turn around without knocking someone over, the Champion down the block has two floors and all the choice I could ask for.

I’ve been whipping up a whole variety of things, and I have many more up my sleeve, which means that I have backlogged posts up the wazoo. They’ll all be making their way on here in what will (hopefully, finally) be daily posts! But first I want to share the dinner I made the night after I decided to quit the job and make writing a full-time affair.

It wasn’t anything crazy, but Alex said it was the best thing I had ever made. Granted, this might have to do with the fact that it involved steak, and anything that involves steak is an A+ in Alex’s book.

I used to be afraid of making steak until I conquered the fear about a year ago. I still don’t make steak very often, but this was a special occasion. When I do make steak, I don’t use a recipe; I just follow the same basic formula I learned last year. I leave the steaks out for about half an hour, salt them right before they hit a combination of hot oil and butter, cook them for a minute and a half per side, and run the fan and pray to God the fire alarm doesn’t go off.

When they come off the grill, I add some black pepper. I’m not sure why I do it in that order… I think I was afraid of burning the pepper once, and now it’s just automatic. At any rate, this provides a perfectly seasoned medium-rare steak (based on the cuts I buy: entrecôtes).

Also on the menu were roasted vegetables. I read a post this week about making sure your man has enough to eat while also ensuring that your jeans still fit, which is exactly how I approach side dishes in my house. Roasted veggies at home were heavy on the potatoes, but I make mine heavy on carrots (and this time, zucchini, which was on sale).

I toss quartered new potatoes, chunks of carrot and a peeled, quartered onion with salt, pepper, olive oil and herbes de provence and roast them in a hot oven. When they’re getting closer to done, I add thinly sliced zucchini to one half of the pan (my oven heats hotter in the back. We’re working together to find a solution.) I love making roasted veggies with a hands-on dish like pan-fried steaks because they cook themselves. I stick my head in every once in awhile to stir things up and see how it’s going, but for the most part, I just let them go for half an hour without paying any attention.

Which means that I have time to make a third dish: salad.

I know that I’ve explained it on here before at some point, but I feel the need to reiterate: salads are my favorite creative medium. It all stems from the fact that when I first started cooking, forever and a day ago, salads were the first part of the meal my mom was willing to relinquish, and I pounced on the offering. Throwing together a creative salad is second-nature now, and salad is on our table most nights of the week.

This salad was a combination of bagged winter lettuce (frisée, red leaf, baby spinach, radicchio), cubed beets (which come cooked and prepared in a vacuum-sealed bag here… something that makes my aunt endlessly jealous), slices of Granny Smith apple, and goat cheese croutons: a staple of my mom’s. I make a simple vinaigrette in the bottom of the bowl and throw in all the ingredients, beets first so that the lettuce doesn’t start to wilt, and then when the roasted veggies are done, I throw the croutons (rounds of baguette topped with chèvre and just a bit of fresh ground black pepper) under the broiler so the cheese can melt.

I considered not sharing any real recipes today, but I realized that sometimes this simple kind of food– food that has started to become second nature for me–isn’t. I can certainly remember a time when it wasn’t this easy for me, when I set my pans on fire and cursed a lot in the kitchen. (OK, I still do that last one.)

So I am going to give you the recipes, but look at them as a starting point. Find out what works for you and go with it. And have fun, of course. That’s what this whole thing: the blog, the decision to make writing the center of my life, and even making dinner every evening, is about. Have fun.
Pan-Fried Steaks

2 entrecôte steaks
2 tsp. olive oil (not extra-virgin)
1 tsp. butter
salt and pepper

Take the steaks out of the fridge and place them on a plate. Allow to come to room temperature, about half an hour.

Heat the olive oil and butter over high heat in a heavy-bottomed skillet. When the butter stops sputtering, salt one side of each steak and place them, salted side down, into the oil. Salt the other side. Allow the steaks to cook without moving them.

After a minute and a half, flip the steaks and allow the other side to cook. When a minute and a half has passed, remove the steaks to a plate and sprinkle with freshly ground black pepper. Allow to sit ten minutes, covered, before slicing.

Roasted Vegetables

5-6 new potatoes, skins on, quartered
1 onion, peeled and quartered
3 carrots, scrubbed but not peeled, cut in thirds and halved
2 small zucchini, sliced into thin coins
1 tbsp. olive oil, separated
1 tsp. herbes de provence
salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F.

Prepare all the vegetables. Keeping the zucchini to the side, toss the rest of the vegetables in a baking pan with the olive oil, salt and pepper, reserving 1 tsp. of the oil.

Place the baking pan in the oven and allow the vegetables to cook for half an hour, stirring every so often. When the potatoes are nearly cooked, push all the vegetables to one side of the pan, and lay the zucchini slices on the empty side, sprinkling with salt and olive oil. Try to lay them with as little overlap as possible.

When the zucchini are cooked, after about ten minutes, use a spoon to toss all the vegetables together and add the herbes de provence.

February 1, 2009

Chili

Filed under: Beans and Legumes, Beef — Tags: , — emiglia @ 9:19 am

I have been a very bad blogger.

I apologize. Profusely. I don’t know why I do this… the second something starts to happen in my life, I drop everything, blog included.

You see, I recently came back to France and started my new job. I work at a television station, which somehow is the job I never knew I always wanted. I’m bored easily, but I love being good at things, and this job lets me always do new things, but at the same time get good at one thing: video editing. The news is always changing, so my job is always new and exciting, and yet I’m constantly editing video, getting better and better at using Final Cut (and becoming more and more of a geek in the process).

The problem with the news is that I get off work around seven or eight, so I have the energy to come home, make dinner, take pictures, and that’s about it. No more energy for blogging, reading blogs, or even creeping around Facebook, which used to be one of my favorite activities.

But now that I’ve finally gotten into the pattern of my evenings, I can share this incredible chili recipe with you. I found the recipe on Well Fed, a blog I have come to depend on for one-pot meals.

Because I do my shopping in the evenings before I come home, I make one stop, and so I wasn’t able to hit the butcher for brisket meat. Instead, I used stew meat, which didn’t fall apart like it was supposed to, so the next day, I took the cold meat out of the chili pot and cut it up before tossing it back into the pot.

I had been using the same chili recipe for years, but this one is truly incredible. I found myself using a bit more liquid than called for in the form of tomato purée and extra beer as this one cooked, but I’ve always found that chili-making is an approximate recipe.

The great thing about this recipe is that it’s even better the next day, which means that we can enjoy it on nights when I come home especially late and avoid dinners made up of boxed macaroni and cheese.

Older Posts »

Powered by WordPress