Today was one of those days when I was filled with a great love for New York City. The energy is always particularly high around the holidays, the streets filled with tourists, the shops crowded and a bracing chill in the air. I was walking up Central Park South, watching dogs chasing squirrels in the park, enjoying the lovely vistas, when I came upon the sweetest sight: a couple of chefs from the Ritz-Carlton feeding the carriage horses fresh carrots (greens and all) from a big market basket. So delightful, especially since I always get a pang of sadness when I see those horses gussied up in that cheesy frippery they really don't deserve. (I think I read Black Beauty just a few too many times as a girl.) Anyway, it was an especially New York-y moment—unexpected, extravagant, poignant. And it was the perfect set-up for an exceptional day that included lunch at A Voce, a facial from the incomparable Claudia Colombo, dinner at Nougatine, A Free Man of Color at Lincoln Center, and a night at The Jane.
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After avidly perusing London-based Yotam Ottolenghi's contributions to The New Vegetarian on The Guardian's website, and reading various reviews of his cookbook (including this one) as it swept the latest Piglet cookbook contest on Food52, I finally pulled the trigger and ordered my own copy of Plenty. It looks like there's an American edition coming out in March, but it's not such a big deal to convert to metric if you have a handy kitchen scale like this one. (I use mine constantly, it takes up no space at all, and is so worth the $35.) Ottolenghi, who owns four eponymous restaurants in the UK, is not a vegetarian himself, but the book contains 120 vegetarian recipes that reflect his Mediterranean background, his original and exciting use of fresh ingredients, and his passionate approach to vegetables. I can't wait to get my hands on my copy. In the meantime, I made one of his recipes published in The Guardian and it came out great. This crisp, fresh salad of celeriac, apple, quinoa and poppy seeds is lightly dressed with a tangy sweet-sour dressing.
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Pie is having a renaissance, although I'm not sure it ever really went away. As discussed in this recent NY Times article, it's about to kick the cupcake off its frosted throne. Yea! As a country, we've got quite a lot invested in the notion of pie. Just like us damn Yankees, it runs the gamut from down-home (tamale pie) to drop-dead glamorous (Baked Alaska). The best pie I've ever eaten was at a tiny shack somewhere near Nashville during a random stop on a cross-country drive. I still remember the shatteringly flaky crust (thanks to lard, no question) and the tangy, juicy whole blackberries. My own sour cherry version is a princess among pies, a slice of summer on a plate, best eaten in July with a scoop of homemade vanilla ice cream. My father had a weakness for pecan pie, that tooth-achingly sweet confection loaded with nuts and Karo syrup. And I have always looked forward to the pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving. But when it really came down to it, I realized that all I truly crave is the custard. It's that smooth, silky consistency I adore, the delicate balance of spices and a subtle sweetness—not the soggy cardboard crust, made worse by everyone's insistence on keeping pie in the fridge. (Where we know baked goods don't improve!) Besides, in this gluten-free household, I have come to realize that eating all that flour is what leaves you feeling bloated and puffy and gross. Especially on Thanksgiving, when you know you are going to load your plate with stuffing and Parker house rolls, maybe dessert is the time to think outside the crust. Or maybe not. Either way, here are a few suggestions for next week's finale.
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Here come the holidays and, with them, your family. Bickering, sibling rivalry, old grudges and the rapid backslide into childhood habits are mitigated by unconditional love and unlimited quantities of sugar and fat. Both my parents are dead, so I have absolutely no chance of recreating that perfect Rockwellian moment. Because I went to college so far from home, I have been glomming onto other people's Thanksgiving celebrations since I was 17 anyway. Now I am a part of G's family, and this year, along with his chef-in-training sister, I am responsible for the turkey. His mother has passed the torch. It's a big responsibility, but not one that can totally distract from the issue of side dishes. I suppose there are some families out there who are wildly experimental with their Thanksgiving menu, trying that mole sauce with the turkey one year, stirring coconut milk and chiles into their sweet potatoes, maybe even passing a post-prandial doobie. But it seems that, for the most part, people really like to stick with TRADITION, even if it means that repellent green bean casserole topped with canned onions. Or having both sweet potatoes and mashed potatoes. The root vegetable is really very popular at this meal, and rightly so. Its earthy sweetness is the essence of comfort food. Try making these sweet and spicy garnet yams (no marshmallows, please), cubed and blitzed in the oven along with some pancetta, while the turkey is being carved. And keep reading to discover the very best mashed potatoes ever. Trust me on this.
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Vegetables are in the zeitgeist. Pro-vegetable articles are popping up all over, like this one and this one. It seems like some people—a vocal minority?—are really starting to embrace Michael Pollan's edict to "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." Actually, I'm not so sure about the "not too much" part. We Americans are all about plenty; a surfeit, even. But look, a ton o' vegetables is still a whole lot healthier than a ton o' beef. And I think I'll just take this opportunity to say once more, and probably not for the last time, I loathe the non-word "veggies." As if somehow you're going to make them what, more palatable? more cute? more friendly? Please. Just do me the great favor of honoring them with their lovely and true name: vegetable. Anyhoo. Eating lots of vegetables is always pretty easy during the warm months, when fresh tomatoes and corn and summer squash and lettuces and herbs are so plentiful, but what about now, as the farmers markets begin to dwindle down to a more paltry selection of onions, squash and the like? I feel a teensy bit smug knowing that my freezer is stocked with bags of local blackberries, freshly shucked corn and homemade tomato sauce. We can easily pop into the grocery store for hydroponic greens and grapes from Chile, but I urge you not to abandon seasonal eating quite so readily. Look again: local cabbage, celeriac, sweet potatoes, leeks, carrots, rutabagas, garlic, kale, collards, beets, turnips. And of course, there are always dried grains and legumes like lentils, chickpeas, barley, wild rice, buckwheat groats (kasha, to you Jews out there), farro, quinoa, brown rice, polenta and all manner of pasta. As well as a slew of nuts, seeds and dried fruits and spices to zhush it all up. The reality is, once you stop thinking of animal protein as the center of every meal, a whole gorgeous world of possibility crops (no pun intended) up.
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Ever since I ate the carrot-and-avocado salad at ABC Kitchen, Jean-Georges Vongerichten's new Manhattan bastion of "farm-to-table" cuisine, I've rekindled my passion for this most common root vegetable. Fear not, I will soon be posting my interpretation of this salad, which involves coating the carrots in a light film of cumin, chile and lemon juice before roasting them to tender perfection. It's truly extraordinary how they become almost meaty. But this is about another carrot salad. It's not wholly unlike the one you'll be presented with at virtually every meal in Morocco, though that tends to be sweeter, more cumin-intensive and full of raisins. This carrot salad is bright with mint and cilantro and spiked with harissa, a wonderfully complex North African spice paste you can find in specialty grocers or online. Or you can whip up a batch yourself; it keeps for ages in the fridge. Either way, the point it to make this salad soon as it will become a new favorite.
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Although nori was originally a more generic word in Japanese, referring to a variety of seaweed types, it now refers only to the red alga Porphyra, sometimes known as laver. Nori is produced through a highly advanced form of agriculture, grown attached to nets suspended at the sea surface. It is processed in a method very similar to what was used for making paper in Japan, and the final product is a translucent, greenish-black dried sheet that's about 7"x8". As with most things Japanese, nori is available in several grades. At the high end is delicate shin-nori from the first of the year's several harvests, which can cost up to $50 per sheet. I buy the roasted yakishushi nori, which would be familiar to you from its use as a sushi wrap. It can also be toasted and flavored for use in other dishes or finely shredded and scattered on rice or stir fries. It is faintly saline with a distinctive marine flavor that is rich in umami. It toasts up quickly in the oven and, when brushed with a little sesame oil and sprinkled with sea salt and sesame seeds, it's crunchy and positively addictive. Oh, and virtually calorie-free.
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I woke up yesterday with an enormous zit on my chin. One of those under-the-skin whoppers that can really mess with your head—literally. Mine is practically tilted to one side. TMI? It was all because of a sudden influx of cheese into my life—starting with that truffled gratin at Eataly, followed by an aged gouda with cumin, then some extra sharp Sicilian pecorino and culminating with an unhealthy dose of cream cheese frosting while creating a birthday cake for the lovely Stephanie. Too much cheese—or dairy in general—inevitably leads to the dreaded blemish. It's my body's (humiliating and uncomfortable) way of letting me know it's had enough. I'm hoping that cutting out flour, sugar and dairy, while amping up the green juice and vegetables, will right my ship. Now, back to that cake. Stephanie has been losing weight by eating low-fat for the better part of a year, and weeks ago she put in her request for an appropriate carrot cake to be served at her birthday dinner. (The rest of the dinner featured this tasty bouillabaisse.) I was determined to bake something that lived up to my gold standard from the original Silver Palate cookbook, a divine confection made with corn oil, whole eggs, walnuts and coconut, and frosted with dreamy swirls of cream cheese-&-butter icing. Delicious, yes, but hardly low-fat. How then to replicate the rich texture and flavor without derailing my friend's diet?
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Woody Harrelson once traveled to the west coast on a hemp-oil-fueled biodiesel bus. It was the subject of a documentary, Go Further, that explores the idea of the individual as the key to large-scale transformational change. Also on the bus were a yoga teacher, a raw food chef and a hemp activist, among others. In case you didn’t know, these are Woody’s peeps. He has long been a vocal proponent of hemp, the soft, durable fiber that is cultivated from plants of a slightly different variety of cannabis than the one that gets you high. (He is also a proponent of that kind.) One of the earliest domesticated plants known, hemp is currently used for a great many commercial purposes, including paper, textiles, biodegradable plastics, food, fuel and medicine. I even use a hemp-based deodorant that is totally natural and quite effective.


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Forgive me, readers, for I have sinned. Somehow I neglected to tell you about one of my favorite treats. I do like having secret sources, but this one is too good not to share. Askinosie is a bean-to-bar chocolate operation based in, of all places, Springfield, Missouri. (No, not all groovy handcrafted chocolate is from the new Brooklyn.) The owner, Shawn Askinosie, had a sort of chocolate epiphany in 2005 and got really distracted from his career as a criminal defense attorney. He studied cocoa post-harvest techniques in the Amazon rain forest and worked in a chocolate factory in Guayaquil, Ecuador, and the result is a very interesting company that is not at all pretentious despite its sophistication. They seek out farmers in Latin America, really understand the beans and process them into award-winning bars at their factory located in a historic building from 1894. Not only is their single-origin dark chocolate some of the best I've ever sampled, but they also do a Soconusco White Chocolate bar made from non-deodorized cocoa butter and goat's milk powder that is studded with pistachios; a Dark Milk Chocolate with Fleur de Sel; and their new Malted Moo Moo Dark Milk Chocolate Bar, with the robust, funky flavor of malt that I find totally irresistible. (Full disclosure: Shawn just mailed me one of these to try after I sent the family chocoholic an Askinosie gift certificate for his recent birthday.)
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