We’ve been stopping by a community garden in our neighborhood doing a bit of weeding and pruning this summer. When we went a few weeks ago, we saw these tall bushes of what looked like dill and smelled like licorice. I tasted a bit and it tasted overwhelmingly like dill, so I thought that was what it was. We took some home and I’ve been adding a little bit to pretty much everything.

We stopped by today and met some of the garden organizers. I told them how much I loved the dill, and it turns out that the bush is anise. I forgot all about that third option in the dill-fennel family.

I’ve already started using it in dill dishes (like the best tzatziki sauce I’ve ever had), so it’s hard for me to think of it as something other than dill. It’s like a dillier dill and it is wonderful. I think that I may need to try to make a batch of “dill” pickles to see if there is any noticeable difference.

Has anyone ever used anise greens in their cooking? I’d love to hear some ideas about what else to do with, since I have several bushes of it available for the taking.

One year ago: Egg white avocado salad

This summer, strapped for time and staving off heat stroke, I can’t stop craving cucumber sandwiches. The simple sandwich highlights the natural coolness of a cucumber and don’t require me to turn on an oven (if you didn’t know, New York has been in the middle of a record breaking heat wave).

Cucumber sandwiches take minutes to make, and seconds to eat, and will leave you feeling light and satisfied.They can be posh with crusts off, perfectly thin bread, cut into tiny triangles and served on china; or they can be rustic with thick, uneven bread, crusts left on, and eaten right off the cutting board they were assembled on.

In fact, they are so easy, I hadn’t even planned on posting the recipe. Then, I brought them to a picnic with friends and was asked for the recipe. Well here it is, if you can call this a recipe. Enjoy and keep cool!

sloppy/neat tea sandwich

Recipe: Cucumber Sandwich

Makes one sandwich, repeat as necessary

• two slices of delicious bread, the thinner and denser the better
• a shmear of mayonnaise and/or cream cheese
• cucumber
• salt and pepper

1. Spread the mayonnaise on one slice of bread, and the cream cheese on the other (or if you only like one of the spreads, spread that one on both slices of bread).
2. Slice a big cucumber on the bias, until you have enough slices to cover one slice of bread. I like the shrink-wrapped English variety for this as their skins aren’t too tough and you can get nice big thin slices out of it.
3. Add the cucumber slices to one side of bread. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and then place the other slice of bread on top.
4. If you’d like to remove crusts or cut the sandwich into shapes, now is the time to do so, because if you wait a moment longer, they will be devoured.

Enjoy with a nice tall glass of iced tea or lemonade.

One year ago: Strawberry Jam Brownies

Related posts:

1. Lotus Root Salad
2. Deviled Egg Salad
3. Half Sour Dill Cucumber Pickles

I could run off a huge list of excuses about the lack of posts lately, but I find those kinds of posts tiresome and I bet you do too. The most interesting reason that I’ve been a bit absent here is that it’s just been too gorgeous out to hang out in a hot kitchen. As much as I advocate for cooking instead of always eating out, there are times when getting out of the house and enjoying the great food your city has to offer is pretty much obligatory.

So get out, enjoy the great food that summer brings out! And hey, if you aren’t lucky enough to be in New York where you can get a great hot dog pretty much anywhere (in any meat or non-meat variety), make one yourself and have a picnic.

I’ll be back soon, I just need to soak up a few more rays and eat a bit more terrible, but oh so wonderful, local foods.

Psst: If you’re still not satisfied, check out the archives by poking into the tags, categories or monthly links in the right side bar.

One year ago: Warm Creamy Peanut Chicken Salad

As far as I can tell, a corn fritter happens when you pan-fry corn kernels in a white flour batter. A hushpuppy, on the other hand, is the product of deep frying dollops of corn meal or cornbread batter. I’m not really sure what happens when you add corn kernels to a corn meal/ white flour batter and deep fry them, other than the fact that whatever they are doesn’t stick around long enough to be named.

Recipe: Fluffy Corn Fritters

Makes 12-15 fritters. Multiply recipe as needed.

• 1/2 cup yellow corn meal
• 1/2 cup white flour
• 1 cup corn kernels
• 1 large or extra large egg
• 1/2 cup of milk or water
• dash each of salt and pepper
• oil for frying (any vegetable oil you prefer)

1. Mix together the dry ingredients well. Add the rest of the ingredients, and mix just until moist. The batter should be thick and lumpy. Allow the batter to sit for at least 15 minutes before frying, just as you might with pancakes or waffles.
2. Heat about an inch of oil in a heavy pot. Drip a bit of batter into the oil after a few minutes. If the oil hisses and  bubbles form around the batter immediately, the oil should be hot enough to fry in. Drop blobs of batter into the oil and allow each to fry on the first side for about 2 minutes. They should be floating a bit. Flip them over and allow to fry on the other side for about another 1 minute – 1 minute and a half.
3. Remove from the oil and allow to drain on a plate with paper towel. Shake a bit of salt and pepper on top while still hot.
4. Repeat as necessary until all the batter has been fried.

Enjoy with any condiment you like, savory, spicy or sweet.

One year ago: Iron Chef: Lemon!

Related posts:

1. Soul Food Success: Fried Chicken, Sweet Potato Wedges, Corn Pudding
2. Light Winter Stir-Fry

As promised, following up from last weekend, here are the results of the Mother’s Day soul food feast. I think the pictures practically speak for themselves. The food was a triumph! The only problem now is that since I know how very easy it is to make perfect fried chicken at home, I’ll want it all the time. I made a few adjustments to the recipes that were new to me (I can never resist). Keep reading for notes on how I made the perfectly fried chicken, sweet potato wedges and corn pudding.

My concerns about the crust on the fried chicken not being crispy enough if left to steam in the oil were unfounded. I followed Paula Deen’s grandmother’s recipe, as mentioned last week, except that I fried the chicken in vegetable oil instead of shortening. I set up less than an inch of oil in an enameled cast-iron French oven because I wanted to make sure I had a good lid to cover the chicken after it crisped. The cast iron also helped regulate the heat and keep the oil as hot as it needed to be to get a good fry over the course of many batches.

After the chicken had one flip, I covered the pan and lowered the heat just a little bit. For the dark meat, I left it covered for about 8 minutes, flipped the pieces and re-covered for another 5 minutes or so until I was sure the meat was done. The white meat cooked a bit quicker. Each piece was drained on paper towel and eaten right away. My mother, the chicken expert, said she had never had homemade fried chicken that didn’t come out either burnt, greasy, or too dry. This chicken was none of those things. The meat was moist and fell away from the bone (when there was a bone to fall away from). The crust was perfectly crunchy and golden, and not greasy at all.

While the success should certainly be attributed to the great recipe I followed, I also think it had something to do with the chicken I used. I bought two chickens on Saturday and butchered them myself that night. This was not only cheaper than buying pre-cut pieces of chicken; I got to trim all the parts to my own taste and not waste a thing. My best move, I think, was to take all of the white meat off the bone so that it could have as much surface area for crispiness as possible. All of the parts that didn’t make it into Sunday’s dinner went into my freezer stash for building chicken stock. And since the pieces were bought right before I needed them, I never had to freeze them, which surely increased their tenderness.

I just gave them a little dry rub with some seasoned salt and pepper the night before and they were ready to be battered and fried according to the recipe right before dinner the next day. Since my favorite part of fried chicken is the crispies on the outside crust, the only thing I would change when making this chicken again is to add salt and pepper to the flour dredge.

I didn’t have a recipe for the sweet potato wedges, and I was a bit worried about how to get them to come out crispy instead of mushy. After doing a bit of internet research, I gleaned tips from various blogs and threads and came up with a process that worked great for me. I cut the sweet potatoes into wedges, skins on. I soaked the wedges in cool water for 30-40 minutes. Then I let the wedges drain in a colander, preheated the oven to 400 degrees,  and lined two cookie sheets with parchment paper. I lined up the wedges on the parchment paper with plenty of space between so the potatoes would roast and not steam.

The wedges went in completely naked, without any seasoning or oil. Then, 15 minutes later, I gave them a flip and let them continue to cook until done. It took a couple of batches, but I was determined not to let them be mushy, so the extra time was worth it. The final product was tasty without adding any extra seasonings, but when I make them again I may decide to toss the wedges in a bit of sea salt the moment they come out of the oven, to encourage the flavors within each wedge to surface.

For the corn pudding, I mostly followed Paula’s corn casserole recipe. I didn’t have a box of corn bread mix on hand, so I just added the dry ingredients following a corn bread recipe I had on hand. If you do this, just substitute the box of mix with 1 1/2 cups corn meal, 1/2 cup flour, 1 tbsp baking powder, 1 tbsp sugar, and 1 tsp salt. I also left off the cheddar cheese, since my mom is not a fan. I might want to play with this recipe a bit more to get it a bit more pudding-like, but all in all, it was a delicious sweet and savory side.

The chicken was crispy, and oh so tender, savory and meaty. The sweet potato wedges had a satisfying crunch to them, along with a hint of caramelization. The corn pudding had firm little kernels that popped in my mouth, surrounded by a full-bodied spoon-bread, and was sweet, fresh and mild. The different textures and flavors of these three dishes, along with the moist bitterness of the red swiss chard and chick peas, came together in great harmony. The whole family really enjoyed everything, and all the extra chicken I made was gobbled up, which is a great sign of a meal well done.

All of this frying and experimenting with corn has got me craving something else wonderful, so expect to see me frying up some corn fritters here soon. I have a new recipe for them that I just can’t get enough of!

One year ago: Gyros Revisited: Beef

Related posts:

1. Mother’s Day Soul Food
2. Fluffy Corn Fritters, or are they Hushpuppies?
3. Warm Creamy Peanut Chicken Salad

I usually post after a meal is eaten and gone, but I’m going to try something a little different this week. I’m going to share the recipes for what I’m making before I make it, and then I’ll let you know how it went and if I made any adjustments to the recipes while cooking. And of course, I’ll include pictures, because I know that’s mostly what I read food blogs for anyway.

For Mother’s Day I want to treat my family to a hearty soul food dinner. Being in Harlem and so close to so many soul food meccas, I first thought I would pick up some giant pieces of fried chicken from Sylvia’s Restaurant, but even though ordering in would be so easy, I’d so much rather try to make it myself. I want to cook up what I imagine (being a Jewish girl from New York) would be a perfect after-church picnic. Considering my mother’s all-time favorite food is chicken, I know she’ll just love it.

I’ll be making fried chicken for the first time, which I’m excited about. I don’t have the ability to really deep fry in my kitchen, so I wasn’t really sure how I would do it. Then I saw this Paula Deen clip on Hulu which reminded me that there are other ways to get a delightfully crusty piece of fried chicken. In the video below, Paula makes her grandmother’s recipe, where she pan fries the chicken and then covers the pan and lets the pieces steam in the oil for the rest of their cooking time.

This recipe looks doable. I wonder how the crust will turn out. I also hope that the pieces don’t retain too much oil after they are removed from the pan. Generally, when frying in oil, the high temperature ensures that water and air are coming out of the food so fast that oil isn’t able to get it. Turning the temperature down but leaving the food in the oil makes me think that the chicken is just going to soak all that oil back up. It almost makes sense to steam them in a different pan and then crisp them back up. I’ll take Paula’s word for it for the first time though.

On the side, we’ll have some sweet potato wedges to help soak up the gravy from the chicken, red swiss chard with chick peas (based on my own collard greens recipe, a big salad, and corn pudding (based on, but not entirely adhering to, another Paula Deen recipe for a corn casserole).

For dessert, Jen’s light but intense mixed berry and lemon sorbet topped with whipped cream, and navel oranges.

I don’t have much experience making soul food, but I’m hoping I’ll manage to keep the soul in it, while keeping it healthy and fresh. And I couldn’t think of a better way to show my mom how much we all love her than by working hard to make some of her favorite foods from scratch.

Are you planning to cook for your mother this Mother’s Day?

One year ago: Velvet Lemon Pasta Sauce, Revisited

Related posts:

1. Soul Food Success: Fried Chicken, Sweet Potato Wedges, Corn Pudding
2. Fluffy Corn Fritters, or are they Hushpuppies?

Earlier this year, I got an ice cream maker attachment for our stand mixer and I’ve been having fun making different frozen desserts with it. I find that it is more fun to experiment with sorbet rather than ice cream as the results are more reliably edible, due to the simplicity of sorbet chemistry: adding together sugar, fruit and water creates a freezable mixture with a velvety smooth texture.

I based the recipe for this batch on this Lemon Sorbet and then adjusted to fit the proportions for the size of my ice cream maker. I just happened to have a frozen bag of mixed berries (strawberries, blueberries, blackberries and raspberries to be exact) on hand, which allowed me to skip the extra steps that have to happen when making sorbet directly from fresh berries.

Lemon Berry Sorbet

Makes approximately 8 servings

• 1 12-oz bag of frozen mixed berries, thawed
• 2 cups sugar
• 2 cups water
• Zest and juice of 2 lemons
• 1/2 cup of extra water if you’d like a stiffer sorbet

1. Make the simple syrup: Combine sugar and water in a saucepan and bring to a boil at medium-high heat, about 10 minutes. Stir to ensure that all sugar is dissolved. Remove from heat, and pour into a metal bowl over an ice bath while stirring to cool down the mixture, or let sit in the refrigerator while preparing the next step, but ice bath is recommended to avoid recrystallization of sugar.
2. In a food processor/blender, add thawed frozen berries, zest and juice of lemon. Blend until smooth. If you don’t want seeds in the final product, run mixture through a fine mesh strainer to remove. I like the seeds, so I didn’t strain. Add mixture to chilled simple syrup, and optional extra water, and chill in the fridge for a couple of hours.
3. Once the mixture has thoroughly chilled, freeze in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions. If you don’t have an ice cream maker, you can pour the mixture into a shallow pan and freeze in your freezer until semi-solid. Then take a fork and fluff it up, returning it the the freezer to freeze firm. Then put in a food-processor or blender to process until smooth.
4. Place sorbet in an airtight container and freeze until ready to serve.

Serve with whipped cream or a fresh peppermint sprig.

Related posts:

1. Velvet Lemon Mushroom Sauce

This may be premature, but tonight, after over 3 months of a very gripping sinus infection that took my senses of smell and taste captive (which you may remember me mentioning a few posts ago), I inhaled and I could smell! Then, I made a gravy for a chicken pot pie, and not only could I smell it, but, upon putting a little dab on my tongue, I could taste it too!

I almost shouted Hallelujah!

I’m not making any promises, but if my returned senses decide to stick around, we’ll probably be able to get back to our regularly scheduled programming without me oversalting, overspicing, or undercooking anything else for the time being.

Along with the sense of taste has come a pretty ravenous appetite, so I think that despite the unseasonably warm weather in New York this week, it’s time for me to get back into the kitchen and fire up the stove!

One year ago: Picnicking under the cherry blossoms

Now that warmer weather has finally come our way, I find myself craving fresh bright salads for dinner. I don’t know about you, but I can’t often satisfy myself with just greens. I’d have to eat a mountain to be full and it wouldn’t really be a nutritionally complete meal. That’s why I’ve been toying with mixing grains into my salads.

Quinoa has become a household favorite just about any time we have avocados around. It was created one night when I knew I couldn’t handle “cooking” anything for dinner. Most of the effort in this dish comes from a little bit of chopping. All told, you can prepare everything while the quinoa cooks and it shouldn’t take much more than 5 minutes to put together, other than cooking the quinoa itself.

What little effort you put in is well rewarded with a salad that packs a zesty flavor along with a good amount of healthy protein, fats, iron, fiber and carbohydrates.

Recipe: Zesty Avocado Quinoa Salad

• 1 cup quinoa
• 2 avocados (1.5 cups), chopped
• 1/4 cup pepperoncini, minced
• 1 cup arugula, mizuna or other bitter green, roughly chopped, torn, or left whole
• 1/2 cup lemon juice
• teaspoon dried tarragon (optional)
• splash of pepperoncini brine
• splash of good olive oil
• salt and pepper to taste

1. Many packages say to rinse the quinoa before cooking, but I generally skip. Either I’ve come to like to taste of saponin on the outside of the grain or the kind I buy is pre-rinsed, but I don’t care for the hassle of rinsing the tiny little things. If you prefer to rinse before cooking, by all means, do so. Just be careful as the light little grains have a tendency to fly everywhere. Cook the quinoa in 2 cups of water in a rice cooker, or in a small pot. If cooking in a pot, bring to a boil, stir, and then lower and allow to cook until the water is gone and the germ (a white little curly-Q) separates from the rest of the grain. Allow to cool.
2. While the quinoa is cooking (or cooling, if you’ve cooked it in advance), chop up all the vegetables that need chopping and add them a large salad bowl with all of the juices and seasonings.
3. Add the quinoa, stir well. Taste and adjust seasonings if necessary.

Enjoy cool or warm. This will also taste great the next day, when the flavors have really soaked into every tiny quinoa grain.

One year ago: Chicken Gyros

Related posts:

1. Egg White Avocado Salad
2. Warm Creamy Peanut Chicken Salad
3. Lotus Root Salad

I know you probably think I’ve posted the same dish twice in a row. And honestly, considering the month I’ve had, I wouldn’t be surprised if I had done that. But no, I’m not that absent-minded (yet). This risotto has an even more winding origin than the last one I posted. If you are actually craving something like Roasted Red Pepper Risotto, I assure you there are far easier ways to come by it. One day I’ll probably try to figure one out. That day was not today.

I bought two gigantic red bell peppers on sale this week and I wanted to try something new with them. I found a tasty sounding recipe for a Roasted Red Pepper Tomato soup on Recipezaar. I’ve had some luck finding inspiration on that site before so I decided to give it a try.

We roasted the peppers in the broiler, turning every thirty seconds or so, until the skins were more or less black and blistery. Then we put the peppers into a paper bag and left them to cool. We peeled the burnt and crackled skin off and de-seeded the slippery roasted peppers. We gathered the rest of the ingredients. We didn’t know what the “chili paste” listed might be in this case, so I fashioned something out of dried chili flakes and hot sauce. We followed all the rest of the steps as written, and then blended it into a nice smooth soup. It was such a gorgeous red, I couldn’t wait to taste it.

What I haven’t mentioned, however, is that I have been fighting off a particularly bad sinus infection these last several weeks, and so my sense of smell, and therefore, taste, has been compromised. I can’t really tell – everything tastes fine to me. My mouth doesn’t seem to know what it is missing. However, when someone else tastes what I’ve prepared, I am reminded how off my senses are right now.

Neither of us is afraid of spiciness, so when Jen tasted the soup and announced that she couldn’t stomach eating more than a spoonful of it, I knew the spiciness must be really bad. I had been so worried about whether or  not the taste of roasted pepper would come through the tomato that I hadn’t even thought about how much spice I had added, or how it would intensify after being pureed.

After working so hard on such a beautiful soup with such prime ingredients, I couldn’t bear to let it go to waste, but it was late, we were both hungry and tired and there was just nothing that could be done to salvage it at that moment. I packed it away for the night, and we munched on the garlic matzoh we had made for dipping instead. I vowed to try again the next day.

I knew I couldn’t trust my senses alone if I wanted to fix this dish. We brainstormed ways we could cool the soup down to a point where it would be edible. First we thought of adding some dairy, to dilute it and nullify the heat. Unfortunately, the heat was too strong for that plan to be effective. The only other option we could think of was to use the soup as the liquid in a risotto. Since we had so recently made a tomato risotto, I was reasonably sure it would work. I crossed my fingers that it would take the heat down enough notches.

I started the risotto as usual, with about half a cup of finely chopped onion and a bit of olive oil in a pot. Then I added about 3 cups of long grain rice and allowed it to toast lightly and get coated with oil. Then we added a cup of the soup and  cup of water at a time, stirring and adding more even amounts of the liquids until the rice puffed and became creamy.

Somehow, magically, the risotto came out as the soup should have. Just a hint of spice, a creamy texture with notes of both roasted red pepper and tomato. It was delicious and I will have the leftovers for lunch this week. I didn’t get to have the soup I was planning on (next time I make it I won’t add spice until much later on in the process, and hopefully I’ll have my sense of taste back by then too), and the experience definitely wasn’t one I’ll willingly repeat, but it turned out delicious in the end anyway.

Hopefully you won’t take the above as instructions on how to make what turned out to be a fabulous dish. The real lesson I would want you to take away from this is that cooking is a creative pursuit. There is no one way to do anything. No matter how badly you think you’ve ruined a dish, a little creative thinking can probably remedy it. Just be patient with yourself and your ingredients and try to think outside the box.

I never would have thought about making risotto like this, but this winding road led me to an unlikely but appetizing dish. Now I’ve still got half the soup left – any ideas on what I could use the rest of it for?

One year ago: Tangy Pineapple Shrimp with Okra

Related posts:

1. Tomato and Sausage Risotto, à la Smitten Kitchen and Martha Stewart
2. Tomato Rice Soup
3. Saucy Apron’s Tomato Bread Soup