bites out of life

Feta-Brined Roast Chicken

Take a quick perusal of this website over the past year-ish and you might think that I’ve subsisted entirely on baked goods. You wouldn’t be entirely wrong — I haven’t been cooking much during quarantine, largely because for large stretches of it, I’ve been lucky enough to be at home with my parents.

The one dish I’ve made more than a few times in the past 12 months? Roast chicken. To me it is an ideal Sunday night dinner: easy, comforting–the kind of meal that can fortify a person for a busy week ahead. The leftovers are ideal for adding to weekday lunches, whether in salad, grain bowl, or even sandwich form.

Most of the time, I stick with my go-to recipe, which yields potato chip-crisp skin and juicy, flavorful meat with minimal fuss. But every now and then, especially when you’re stuck at home for yet another quarantined weekend, a little bit of fuss seems appealing.

Enter this feta-brined roast chicken. Melissa Clark uses tangy feta to brine a whole chicken overnight, and then rubs the chicken with a lemon zest-and-oregano spice blend and roasts the chicken at a high heat until it’s crisp.

She (and I) highly recommend you seek out the fresh feta that comes as blocks packed in water — its flavor is fresher than the pre-packed crumbles. While she didn’t use that feta water for her brine, I did (and took the salt down a bit elsewhere in the recipe) to really bump up that salty, savory flavor. I used a Bulgarian sheep’s milk feta, which is extra creamy and rich, and was especially lovely in the post-roast pan sauce.

The results were everything I want from a roast chicken: bright, juicy meat with skin that crackles as you bite into it. I especially loved the pan sauce, luxed up with more crumbled feta and a good squeeze of lemon. Serving the chicken atop a bed of pan sauce-dressed greens ultimately leads to a lighter roast chicken dinner, one that’s ready for spring. 🌿

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Pistachio Loaf Cake

So … it’s been a crazy ~~few months~~ year, huh? How has your quarantine been? I’m still here, watching more TV than I ever thought possible, reading less than I should, baking bread (banana and otherwise), and trying to otherwise stay afloat as the world implodes around us. Hope you are safe, healthy, and otherwise well!

I’ve been spending a lot of time home with my parents in Delaware, which means two things: 1. I’ve been letting my mom “take the lead” on cooking (aka doing all of it, not that she minds); and 2. I have watched all of the British murder mystery shows. Midsomer Murders, Endeavour, Father Brown, the entire Agatha Christie oeuvre — if a crime has occurred in the British countryside, I have watched a quaint old person solve it.

I love them. They’re usually charming, set in a cute town that I can’t wait to move to, and riveting enough to forget my existential angst at the state of the world for 60-ish minutes. They also always feature people sitting down for tea, usually with some sort of delicious looking cake on the side.

One of the biggest benefits of being home is that most days feature at least one cup of chai (small solace for being unable to take my annual trip to Kolkata last year). We don’t usually have cake with our tea, but after 1,859 episodes of Miss Marple, I decided it was time to change that.

Finally inspired to return to the kitchen, I turned (as I usually do), to Deb Perelman at Smitten Kitchen. I’d bookmarked this pistachio loaf cake long ago, and as fate would have it, we had exactly enough pistachios to make it. (Though not the pistachio glaze, an error that I will rectify the next time I make this.)

The cake is dead simple if you have a food processor, nutty and fragrant, and despite my best efforts to ruin it by baking it at 350F for 53 minutes before realizing that the bake temp is actually 325F, incredibly plush and word-that-must-not-be-mentioned-but-starts-with-M. The best part is the color: it bakes up into the loveliest shade of chartreuse, one of my absolute favorite colors to wear, decorate with, and now, eat.

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Seven weeks ago, like everyone else, I decided that an extended period at home meant I would finally conquer that white whale: bread. Amidst the Great Yeast Shortage of 2020, we struck out at three different grocery stores before finally finding the good stuff at the most unexpected of places — the Indian store.

One problem: I don’t eat a ton of bread, and neither does my family. (This is not to say we don’t eat carbs. There has been plenty of rice and potato consumption over the past month and a half, to the point where I’m no longer sure I can fit into non-stretchy pants.)

So, with a pound of yeast sitting in the freezer, I turned to yeasted coffee cakes. Somewhere between cake and bread, they’re often lightly sweetened, with a plush, tender interior and beautiful bronzed exterior. Take 1 was an apricot-almond wonder that I was too lazy to photograph. Take 2 was a Bee Sting Cake that I started at 6 a.m. on a Saturday and let cool during a two-hour drive from Delaware to NYC.

I was determined to finally photograph Take 3, which meant I needed a real stunner. Truth be told, Takes 1 and 2 were both delicious and I would have happily recreated them here, but my parents wanted something new.

While scouring the internet for recipes that fit a fairly narrow set of parameters (must be: yeasted, a sweet cake, include some sort of nuts [for my mom], a glaze [for my dad], nothing that required interminable kneading* [for me]), the words “Sunshine Coffee Cake” immediately jumped out at me. After seven weeks of stress/anxiety/fear/isolation/ennui, I–and I’m sure many of you–could definitely use some sunshine.

The recipe, from the King Arthur Flour site, is fairly straightforward. You start by mixing the yeast with most of the dough ingredients and letting it sit briefly, which helps get the yeast going and produces a lighter overall texture. Then add the remaining ingredients, knead until the dough is smooth (I didn’t find it overly tacky or hard to knead by hand), and let it rise.

I made two changes: inspired partially by this recipe, I added finely chopped toasted almonds to the filling. I also skipped right on by the complicated shaping suggestion, but my less exciting version looked lovely, especially when ~~covered by~~ drizzled with an orange glaze and showered with slivered almonds.

The resulting cake is actually sunshine on a plate. It’s tender and bursting with orange flavor, pleasantly sweet without veering into dessert territory. I especially loved the texture of the almonds running throughout — little nubbly surprises with every bite. It’s exactly the kind of bright, flavorful cake I want with my morning coffee (or my mid-morning coffee, or my afternoon coffee — don’t judge).

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Hi friends! Remember me? It’s been over a year since my last post, an absence that was entirely unplanned. I got busy (with work, life, and then summer … the usual) and stopped cooking. Then inertia took over, so that even when I started cooking again, I stopped pausing every few steps to hover dangerously over counters and take photos. On top of that, on those rare occasions when I did have the time and patience for photos, I wasn’t very inspired to write.

This space has always been a creative outlet for me, a place to share my passion for cooking and eating and talking about food. Suddenly, it felt like work. So, at the start of this year, my 10th (!!!!!) year of blogging, I decided to lean into the break, and come back to blogging when I felt ready to do so, rather than forcing the issue.

And then the world changed. Covid-19 has impacted everyone in some way, and every day, I feel fortunate that my loved ones and I have our health and each other. I fled my small NYC apartment* for the much larger rooms/outdoor space of my parents’ place in Delaware, and like many people, am finding solace in the kitchen.** So far, I’ve made multiple rounds of banana bread, cookies (one batch very good, one batch less so), one mediocre focaccia, and one dreamy almond-apricot coffee cake.***

I’ve really sought out cooking projects, the kind of hours-in-the-kitchen cooking that I either didn’t have time for or didn’t feel excited about for much of the past year. Chief on that list was this recipe for palmiers, the flaky-crisp barely sweetened cookie that I tried on my first trip to Paris more than a decade ago.

Palmiers are made with puff pastry, and most recipes use store-bought. But binging The Great British Bake-Off convinced me that one day, I should try my hand at homemade puff pastry, and then Erin McDowell, baker extraordinaire and star of Food52’s latest show, “Bake It Up A Notch,” gave me the blueprint. The first episode was puff pastry, and each time I watched the video to give edit notes, I convinced myself a little bit more that *I* could make this.

Erin’s palmiers are extra doable because they’re made with “rough puff,” as the Brits say. That means that instead of encasing a block of butter in dough and ~~wrestling with it~~ rolling it out, we’re making a much simpler dough, one that’s fairly similar in technique to pie crusts. The major difference is in the size of the butter pieces–when making pie, you want peas, but here, we’re looking for walnut halves.

I won’t lie: there is some tedium here. Roll, fold, refrigerate; roll, fold, refrigerate — this is a recipe literally ideal for days when you are stuck at home with very little to do. Per my “research,” you can watch about 7 episodes of The Office while making these palmiers, and rather than wonder afterwards why you spent your day watching The Office, you can laud your productivity while eating a flaky, crispy, buttery cookie.

How are y’all coping with Covid-19? Have you made anything delicious? Hope you’re safe and well!

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A Pret-Inspired Lentil Soup

Hi friends. Did you think I forgot about you? Did you think, “thank goodness — I never have to pretend I care about her random Internet musings again!” Or are you one of those people who are only here for the recipe?

I don’t blame you, today’s recipe is well worth skipping over anything I have to say. (Not that I have a lot to say: I’ve been head-down in a bunch of really exciting things, both professionally and personally, but I can’t really talk about them yet because I don’t want to jinx them, so … )

But in this crazy busy time, I haven’t been able to cook very often, which means I’ve been buying my lunch far more frequently than my bank account likes. And lest you think that that means all sorts of exciting salads and sandwiches and grain bowls, I’ll be honest: mostly it means a lot of lentil soup.

It’s a bit of a joke among my foodie co-workers how often I go to the Pret A Manger down the block from my office, but I’ll stan for Pret any day. Or at least its lentil soup. It’s hearty and filling and all the things you would expect from a bowl of lentils, but somehow doesn’t feel heavy or nap-inducing. There’s a brightness to it, likely from the hit of vinegar added at the end (I assume), and the caramelized onions add sweetness and almost a creaminess that make lentils the stuff of dreams.

In the past two months, I’ve made this lentil soup four times, which when you consider that I’ve only cooked six times total, should give you a sense of how much I love this soup. My version, using this Well+Good recipe as a jumping off point, is a bit more intensely spiced than the Pret version, and I doubled up on the vegetables. But I’ve compared it to the original a few times, and it holds up. Definitely worth skipping straight to the recipe for! …

Mushroom Lasagna

Why am I talking about a multi-layered baked pasta dish on the cusp of spring? Wouldn’t this dish have been much more appreciated as a cozy respite from a bitterly cold day? Shouldn’t we all be concerned about “swimsuit season” and all its attendant “slim down” strategies, rather than a melange of carbs and cheese?

These are all valid questions. (Well, minus the swimsuit one — I am firmly in this camp.) Yes, this mushroom lasagna recipe might have been helpful to share a month ago, especially since it is basically the food equivalent of a hug* or pulling on your go-to sweater.

However. This is not a lasagna that requires a nap immediately after. No need for pounds of ricotta or two types of meat for a bolognese — mushrooms and a bechamel sauce take the starring roles, and there’s only one cup of Parmesan involved cheese-wise.

The mushrooms are sauteed in butter until they become nutty and caramelized, the bechamel gets cooked in the same pan so they pick up a lot of those flavors, and then the Parmesan adds an extra punch of umami and depth. Paired with a simple green side salad (not pictured, because I actually made this in January where side salads were far from my consciousness), it is a perfect bridge between the last gasps (gusts?) of winter and the warmer weather to come.

*Can I let you in on a weird and kind of embarrassing secret? I hate hugs. I’m not sure what it says about me (I’m sure nothing good) but seriously, don’t come at me with open arms — I will duck. …

Braised Chicken with Salami and Olives

As to be expected, my new job has done wonders for my own cooking. Learning via osmosis is a very real thing, and being surrounded day in and day out by professionals means I’ve picked up quite a few tricks: microplaning upside down so you catch more zest,

But the biggest boon has been in recipe inspiration — my coworkers are gems at discovering fascinating things to cook. Sometimes, they spark me to seek out classics, but in this instance, a Genius drove me straight to the source of this savory, bright, impossibly flavorful braised chicken.

It had me at “braised.” And then again at “salami.” And “olives” too. Crisped golden chicken doesn’t hurt either, nor does fennel, rosemary, oregano, and lemon juice. There are layers upon layers of flavor here, each adding a bit of zing. The salami and olives are here to add salt, sure — but they also add depth, and they infuse the sauce with so much punch that I literally drank it with a spoon.

The recipe comes from Donald Link, the mastermind behind the best thing I ate in New Orleans, and it is exactly the kind of chicken I want in the dead of winter: sharp and snappy and so jazzed up that I forget warm weather is still many many months away. …

My Family’s Mangsho (Goat or Lamb Curry)

Mangsho is a superstar of Bengali cuisine. The word itself means meat in Bengali, but it usually refers to a deeply savory, spicy goat curry that has a rich, velvety sauce and is impossibly delicious. A base of ginger, garlic, caramelized onions and spices builds layer upon layer of flavor, and the meat is cooked in this mixture until it becomes meltingly tender.

The most popular style in Kolkata is “khosha,” meaning cooked low and slow with frequent stirring. The sauce ends up thicker and more luxe this way, and it’s a staple at most celebrations. Our family’s version* is possibly the most-requested dish at my parents’ home, and according to the extremely unbiased family members who have made the comparison, it holds its own against the mangsho served in any restaurant in Kolkata. Coincidentally, it’s the only thing my dad really cooks.**

The recipe is my personal white whale. It’s always seemed complicated and time-consuming, with the added challenge of, like any of my family recipes, a complete lack of precise instruction. (“Add a little bit of this and then some this and cook it until it smells right” … 😬)

But after multiple trips home to Delaware last year where I diligently watched/helped/took notes while my parents cooked mangsho (like I said, it’s very popular in our home), I finally mustered up the courage to give this recipe a try on my own. (Apparently, 2019 is the year for conquering cooking challenges.)

Goat is not the easiest to find. My parents go to a Pakistani grocery store in Delaware, but the closest one to me in New York is in Queens, and if you think I’m trekking out to Queens for three pounds of meat, you’re funny. I will only trek to Queens for dumplings. So I went with bone-in lamb pieces, available via Fresh Direct.

To me, lamb has a slightly gamier taste than goat, but since I cooked the meat in the spice mixture for so long, all of that gaminess got masked. Really, the biggest difference ended up being the size of the pieces of meat — my lamb was cut fairly large, so the meat took a long time to get tender. (Usually, we buy baby goat, and the pieces are roughly 2 inches in size.)

Because I was using lamb and was a little concerned about getting the meat as soft as baby goat, I marinated the meat overnight in a mixture of yogurt and turmeric. I’d highly recommend this if you’re going the lamb route — it helped tenderize the meat and get rid of some of that gaminess.

From there, I hewed very closely to my parents’ outline: slowly caramelizing a lot of onions until they’re sweet, building a rich base. Then, a ginger-garlic-onion-tomato paste and a turmeric-cumin-coriander-chili spice blend add even more flavor and heat. Cooking the spices is really important, as it deepens and amplifies them, which is extra-crucial since there are so few of them. (I’ve had plenty of versions with additional spices [and there are a lot of many-spiced versions on the Internet], but I really think simple is best.) The lamb (or goat) cooks low and slow for more than two hours, absorbing all of these flavors and spices until they’ve fully permeated every part of the meat. You’ll want to stir regularly to make sure that the bottom of the pot doesn’t burn, and using a heavy-bottomed pot is key.

While I personally thought this version was fairly close to the original, I ended up carrying some of this back to Delaware to get an expert opinion. The ‘rents agreed, with their only critique being that I should have used more oil and more salt. Feel free to take their suggestions, but know that even without them, this mangsho is pretty dang good.

Next cooking challenge on the docket? Focaccia! Anyone have a go-to recipe?

*To be totally honest, most of the time my parents cook a slightly different style of mangsho — in a pressure cooker, with a more liquidy sauce. The pressure cooker realllllly gets the meat tender (like fall-apart tender), and the less rich style is easier to consume on a semi-regular basis.

*To be fair, my mom does the prep and can make a mean version of this mangsho herself, but my dad is the official “mangsho master” in our home. …

Jim Lahey’s No-Knead Bread

I am terrible at keeping up with New Year’s resolutions. I dutifully set them every year (exercise more, eat healthier, read more books / less of the Internet — the usual), but invariably fail because the New Year coincides with my hibernation period, and the last thing I want to do when it’s 6 degrees outside (actual temperature I woke up to on Thursday) is exercise.

So this year, I decided to take my #NewYearNewMe aspirations to a smaller, more manageable level. Each month, I’m setting mini goals for myself, because while eating healthier in 2019 seems a little daunting, eating one extra serving of fruits or vegetables per day in January does not.

Inspired by many, many episodes of The Great British Bake Off, one of my January mini goals was to bake bread. I decided to start with a tried-and-true classic, one of the first “viral” recipes of the Internet — literally everyone has made it. Except me. Until now.

For the uninitiated: back in 2006, Jim Lahey, of Sullivan Street Bakery fame (if you live in or ever find yourself in New York, GO HERE.) shared his recipe for a crusty, light-crumbed, delicious bread with Mark Bittman and the New York Times. It created a sensation due to its ease: the dough comes together in five minutes, and then the yeast does all the work for you. J. Kenji Lopez-Alt breaks down the science better than I ever could, but it really is magical how such little effort can yield such stunning results.

Since I was a total bread-making newbie, I wasn’t totally sure what I was doing, and my loaf definitely came out a bit more … bronzed than it should have. But the taste was incredible, and a week’s worth of toast for breakfast was a dream. This was definitely a promising first foray into the world of bread-making, and I envision many more no-knead loaves in my future. …

Dark Chocolate Orange Cake Balls

You’d think, after almost 9(!!) years of blogging, and now working at Food52(!!!), that I’d have mastered simple things like layer cakes. (Indeed, I’ve had successes with a few in the past.) You’d think, would you not, that after endless cakes, a little something like turning a cake out of a pan would be no sweat.

You’d be so so so wrong.

I volunteered to bake my sister a birthday cake to celebrate her 29th year of existence, and she asked for a layer cake starring Deb Perelman’s chocolate olive oil cake. Reasonable request, right? Deb has never steered me wrong, and I already knew chocolate and olive oil were a match made in fudgy heaven.

And yet. The cake is simple enough — it requires only 9 ingredients, most of which are pantry staples, and creates an incredibly plush, deeply chocolate-y cake. I made a double batch, expecting to slice the layers into thin halves to create a four-layer cake. (Ambitious, I know.) The only problem? The cakes were basically glued to the bottom of my pans. Deb recommends lining the cake pans with parchment, but I figured since my pans were nonstick that a good solid buttering would suffice. Life lesson learned: always listen to the experts …

But nine years of blogging (not to mention, 30+ years of life) have taught me that often, fails are salvageable — very delicious but crumbled cake most of all. Cake balls immediately jumped to mind, and the fact that they’re much easier to transport cross-borough was the icing (pun intended) on the top. My original plan was to layer the cake with mascarpone-orange frosting, so that became the binder for these cake balls.*

I’m not going to lie to you: it was a huge pain to stand there and roll these out. I had a LOT of cake (two 9-inchers) and I used 1.5 of them to make 101(!!!) cake balls. I ended up freezing a third of them in rolled-out-but-pre-chocolate-coated form, because I didn’t have the patience or the chocolate chips to coat them all. So I think one 9-inch cake will yield 60 cake balls, which is lucky for you because cake fails aside, these are DELICIOUS.

They’re fudgy and deeply chocolate-y, with a subtle hint of orange. I didn’t sweeten the mascarpone, so it keeps the cake balls tangy and tender, but I did use a sweeter chocolate for the coating than I would otherwise (semi-sweet chocolate, which is usually 42% cacao — if you like your desserts a bit sweeter, I’d use milk chocolate for the coating). You could also of course use candy coating, which is technically better suited for this purpose and will likely give you a better looking cake ball. (Though in my humble opinion, nothing *tastes* better than real chocolate, and that’s what we’re really here for, amirite?)

I’m sure there are great takeaways from this experience about not giving up and learning from failure, etc. etc. but I’m a little busy eating cake balls to philosophize. May all your lessons in 2019 be this delicious! …

Gougeres with Cheddar and Mustard

One of the more pleasant side benefits of my new gig at Food52 is that even the most complicated-seeming recipes have started to seem very approachable. Chicken with forty cloves of garlic? Check. A crispy chicken thigh recipe that breaks all the rules? No problem. A summery salad that combines classic caprese and panzanella? I can’t wait to make that one again.

This time, inspiration struck while watching multiple edit rounds of a video starring a total kitchen superhero. Dorie Greenspan (of course) made fancy French cheese puffs seem so doable, that I ran to the kitchen to make them immediately (ie. two months later, because upside-down-face emoji).

Gougeres, as they’re called in French, are cheese puffs made with a savory choux pastry dough (choux pastry is also used to make eclairs, profiteroles, crullers and lots of other sweets). Choux pastry seems really difficult, but it’s actually easier than you’d think — boil butter and water, add flour and stir stir stir until the dough comes together, then stir in eggs and cheese. Traditionally, the French use Gruyere or Comte to make gougeres, but I had a fridge full of cheddar, so that’s what’s I used. And because I used cheddar, I also had to add some mustard, because what’s better than cheddar and mustard?

The best part is that you can portion out the gougeres on a baking sheet and freeze them, then transfer them in a plastic bag. Then when you need them, you can pop them straight from the freezer to the oven, and bake them right before your party guests arrive — what’s more welcoming then a plate full of freshly baked cheese puffs?

Next up on my “to conquer” list: bread. Between Food52 and my recent GBBO binge, I’ve become convinced that bread is something I can absolutely cook up in my stand mixer-less, half-counter kitchen with the tricky oven. We’ll see how that goes … …

Peppermint-y Chocolate Shortbread Cookies

Truth time today: despite the many many many! cookie recipes on this blog (including these classic sugar cookies, which I’ve recently updated), come this time of year, I only have eyes for two. My #1 number ones are these pecan sandies, and if I don’t make them, my family will literally lock me out of the house. But I’m also the crazy person hovering over the cookie tray in search of buttery shortbreads.

Growing up, those Danish butter cookies in the blue tins were a staple in our household (and I’m fairly certain my mother still keeps her sewing stuff in one of those tins). Since then, I’ve discovered shortbread-esque cookies from around the world: French, British, Norwegian — it feels like every country has their take on shortbreads, and I’m here for all of them.

Because it’s the time of year to do the absolute most (see: this 4-part 14-step trifle), I took my craving for shortbread cookies to slightly over-the-top places. I added chocolate, because what is not improved by a bit of deep dark chocolate?

Then, in a fit of ~~madness~~ inspiration (I’ve been watching a lot of The Great British Bake-Off recently*), I decided to drizzle white chocolate overtop my refined, elegant shortbreads AND THEN sprinkle them with crushed candy canes. It’s the equivalent of taking your most chic little black dress and topping it off with a sequin shrug. (Have also done this, also don’t regret it.)

The result of this minimal additional effort is a batch of cookies that will stun at any cookie swap or holiday party. These are showstoppers, walk-into-a-room-and-all-eyes-on-you cookies that taste as good as they look (or better, if your drizzling technique is anything like mine). They also ship very well, and are sure to make long-distance loved ones very very happy. Definitely worth expanding my cookie palate for …

*Okay, more truth time: until two weekends ago, I had never watched The Great British Bake-Off. I KNOW. Me. She who loves any and all baking-related content, who lives for the quaint English countryside and British-isms (“scrummy!” “chuffed!” “gutted!” I die.) I’ve since rectified my grave error by inhaling episodes of this show, dreaming grand dreams of conquering fresh loaves of crusty bread and bronzed, multi-layered patisserie (never with a soggy bottom though!). So far, said enthusiasm has only manifested itself in a somewhat garish explosion on top of the most British of “biscuits,” as Mary Berry would say, but I have faith.

Need more cookie ideas? ALL the cookies are here, and regardless of my fondness for them, they’re all delicious! …

Cheesecake-Marbled Pumpkin Slab Pie

This year’s Friendsgiving (Year 5!! Too much food to fit on the table!) teetered on the brink of disaster from start to finish. My oven, which I generously call “unreliable” on its best days, had basically conked out a week before Friendsgiving, and after multiple frantic calls to my super, I was promised a new oven … which would arrive the day after I hosted 10 people in my tiny apartment.

Since my oven (usually) heated to the correct-ish temperature but was having issues consistently holding that temperature for long periods of time, I had to improvise a few things. My beautiful dry-brined and herb-roasted turkey got spatchcocked*, which reduced the cooking time to just over an hour for my 14-pounder. And my perfect pumpkin pie went the slab pie route, with a quick jaunt in cheesecake land, courtesy of Deb at Smitten Kitchen.

Slab pies, aka pies cooked in a jelly roll pan (which has higher sides that a regular baking sheet … learned that the hard way), are a dream for large gatherings, since they make a large amount of pie, slice up easily and are very portable. I only had 10 people, but I very luckily found a 9-x-13 jelly roll pan that I will now use for any and all sheet-pan dinners.

The problem was that my little half-counter was way too small for rolling out a slab pie crust — at one point, I literally had half of my dough dangling off the side of the counter and drooping dangerously towards the floor. I ended up with a thicker-than-normal pie crust for that reason, and even a longer-than-recommended parbake didn’t get the crust cooked all the way through. (I was the only one who minded, and there are pie crust flakes all over my couch that prove that most of the crust was flaky AF. [Who wants to come help me clean??])

I also had some issues creating the perfect marble. My cream cheese filling was much thicker than my pumpkin mixture, despite leaving my cream cheese to soften for far longer than I’m sure the FDA recommends and using two extra tablespoons of cream. I kind of blobbed the cream cheese first and then poured the pumpkin all around it, but swirls were not really in the cards for me. Yet again, no one minded.

This is something I forget and re-learn every single year — it turns out most people show up for Friendsgiving (or Thanksgiving — or any gathering, to be fair) mostly to spend time together. No janky oven or thick-crusted oddly-marbled pie will change that. As you stress out about the million things on your cooking list, just remember that: you’re cooking for loved ones, and at the end of the day, Domino’s is just a phone call away (as my bro-in-law so kindly reminded me while I was in full oven panic mode).

Looks aside, the pie was delicious. I love pumpkin pie, especially the silky smooth version I made to great success last year, which uses the same pumpkin filling as this one. The added cream cheese marble creates a creamy, tangy contrast to that spiced pumpkin custard. Fun fact: I had some leftover filling and in my infinite laziness, I mixed the pumpkin and cream cheese mixtures together instead of marbling and baked them in muffin tins. It was so delicious that I think I might avoid my marbling woes and mix them on purpose next year.

Hope you have a delicious, stress-free happy Thanksgiving!

*Spatchcocking means removing the backbone so that the bird lies flat on a baking sheet. It allows the light and dark meat to cook evenly, so it’s highly recommended by a lot of chefs, including our Test Kitchen director, who made this great video explaining the process. It’s now my favorite word and I’ve been inserting it into any and all conversations over the past few weeks. …

Classic Green Bean Casserole

Growing up, we didn’t have the classic everyone-seated-at-the-dinner-table perfectly-bronzed-turkey Norman Rockwell-esque Thanksgiving dinners. Our Thanksgivings involved 50-ish people and a buffet-style dinner featuring a mix of traditional Thanksgiving recipes, popular Bengali dishes and adventurous things people wanted to try, all of which required a detailed eating game plan in order to try everything without exploding.

Somehow, in all those years, no one took it upon themselves to make a green bean casserole. Frankly, I’m not surprised, as the most famous (or maybe infamous) recipe involves canned beans, canned cream of mushroom soup and canned crispy onions, and my family has never been one for cans (cranberry sauce aside). So I had never actually tried green bean casserole until fairly recently, the day this video was shot.

I was shocked at how delicious it was, but I shouldn’t have been. You know how much I love mushrooms, so a velvety mushroom-infused sauce enveloping crisp-tender green beans topped with crunchy onions is definitely speaking my language.

While Emma’s recipe was delicious (and I highly recommend it if on Thanksgiving, you, like me, inevitably find yourself out of the requisite oven space for a traditional green bean casserole), once again, she inspired me to seek out the original. No, not cans — this green bean casserole, labeled the “best ever” by Alton Brown himself. (Deb at Smitten Kitchen also adapted this recipe, so of course, I had to give it a try.)

Alton’s recipe has you toss sliced onions with flour and panko to get them nice and crunchy, and then bake them in a super-hot oven til they’re golden. I had some issues with this (possibly due to my extremely unreliable oven), so I’d check early and often on these onions, to prevent them from burning.

The rest of the recipe is very smooth sailing — blanched green beans, butter-sauteed mushrooms, quick roux, chicken stock and cream to give the sauce body. And the end result is creamy, crunchy, savory, slightly sweet (those onions!) — something I’d definitely bring to our Thanksgiving this year! …

Wild Rice Stuffing with Mushrooms

It’s that time of year again: Thanksgiving prep time, aka my own personal Super Bowl. (And as of this August, my professional Super Bowl as well!) And as I’ve told you all time and again, stuffing is my absolute favorite part.

This year, I’ve offloaded Friendsgiving stuffing duties to the friend who originally introduced this classic recipe into my life. And I’ve already tapped my mom to make her completely-untraditional-but-SO-SO-delicious deviled egg stuffing for our actual Thanksgiving. But because I just can’t get enough, I also really wanted to try a wild rice stuffing … you know, just in case. (It’s also a gluten-free option, if you have guests who don’t eat bread!)

My inspiration for this stuffing was a stuffed acorn squash recipe I made back in 2014(!!!). It was herby and savory and studded with butter-sauteed mushrooms. I found an Epicurious recipe that went a step further and added caramelized onions (be still, my heart!) and dried pears, which I of course immediately swapped to dried cranberries mostly because I had no desire to track down dried pears.

Like all good stuffings, you can and should make this a day or two ahead of time, so that the flavors have time to meld and bind and become impossibly delicious. Then, on Thanksgiving Day, simply pop the stuffing in the oven (while your turkey is resting after roasting — please don’t forget this step!). I highly recommend leaving it uncovered for part of its oven journey, as the top gets golden and crunchy* and I will fight you for this crispy rice. It’s not Thanksgiving without at least one fight …

*I was having major oven issues, so my stuffing did not get as golden as I would have liked. The best part of cooking for one though is that I didn’t have to share the parts that did get crispy and wonderful.

…

Roast Chicken with 40 Cloves of Garlic

Working at Food52 has many advantages, one of the more important ones being that I am surrounded by people who love food as much as I do. Every day, new recipes inspire me (and getting to taste all of the recipes is a real treat.

Most of the time, an innovative technique from the test kitchen propels me to try something new and different. (A lot of these experiments haven’t shown up on my blog yet because the downside of starting a new job is that you have very little energy at the end of the day, especially not for standing on chairs and navigating your tiny kitchen to photograph food. And then write about it. 😬)

However a recent recipe from Emma Laperruque’s Big Little Recipes franchise sent me the other way: racing to try a classic recipe that’s been done a million times, by Ina and Nigella and Martha and countless others. But never by ME. Emma took the classic chicken with 40 cloves of garlic and applied it to pot roast. It was delicious, and I can’t wait to revisit when I look like this.

But it reminded me that I have yet to make the classic version, a mistake that I rectified immediately. In choosing a recipe to follow, I found myself torn: there are so many versions, and they all look delicious. Do I go with my queen Ina? Or the Leite’s Culinaria version, which has roasted potatoes in the mix? Or this one from Marian Burros, which skips the fussy (and messy) “brown the chicken on the stove” step?

But then I spotted the game changer. In Nigella’s version, you don’t have to actually peel 40 cloves of garlic. As much as I love a good ~~finicky~~ meditative? kitchen project, I’d prefer for my hands not to smell like garlic for the rest of my days, so Nigella it was.

The recipe itself is fairly straightforward, at least for someone who makes as much chicken as I do. Brown, roast with aromatics, devour. I added some extra wine (duh.) and chicken stock prior to roasting so that there’d be more of a “pan” sauce afterwards, and let me tell you: I’ve never felt more sad to not have baguette at home than when the sauce came out of the oven and I had nothing to slather it on. (Have I learned nothing from my travels in France??)

I love chicken and I love garlic, so I knew that I would like this dish. But I never realized how much I would like it. My apartment smelled wonderful, so much so that I want to bottle up the scent and sell it in candle form. The garlic cloves mellow as they roast, becoming slightly sweet but intensely savory during their time in the oven. The little cloves become soft and almost jammy, and let me tell you, not being able to squish them out of their wrappers and spread them on toast was really sad. I ended up buying bread and doing this on Day 2, and while it was delicious, it was nothing like when they were fresh out of the oven. (I won’t tell you how many garlic cloves I ate sans accoutrement on that first night, only that if I had encountered any vampires, I would have been safe). …

7 (Perfect!) Bites From New Orleans

Apologies for my absence. September was a crazy month for me (I was home all of one weekend) so there wasn’t much cooking or writing or anything other than working and traveling happening in my world. But to compensate, I bring you a massive list of things to do in New Orleans.

I turned 30 this weekend. It feels perfectly right — my 20s were amazing, but I’m really excited for this next decade of my life. To celebrate, I convinced seven of my closest friends to join me for a weekend in New Orleans. I’ve always wanted to visit (any place that celebrates food, drinking, music and dancing as much as NOLA is a place I must be) and man oh man did it deliver. Literally every moment of the weekend was amazing: the city is just imbued with an energy and a vibe that is all its own. It’s truly magical.

… And the food? Every bit as delicious as you’d think. It was actually impossible to narrow it down, so I didn’t, hence the novel below:

Fried Chicken at Willie Mae’s
I’ll be honest: I’m not sure if my meal here was real or a fever dream. We came here after a long night of Bourbon/Frenchman Street partying, waited over an hour in the hot sun, and I may have been slightly delirious when I finally sat down. Is it possible that fried chicken could actually be that shatteringly crisp on the outside and juicy and tender on the inside? Do the laws of physics account for such things?

Apparently so. Willie Mae’s has won a James Beard Award and been named “America’s Best Fried Chicken,” so the fried chicken is really that good. The wait is long, the menu is short (only five entrees, though the sides are endless and delicious, especially the red beans and rice, mashed potatoes and mac and cheese), but you really only need one thing: the fried chicken. It is perfection, especially after a night of drinking, and absolutely worth all the effort to get it.

Cochon
This place is on every “Essential New Orleans” list, so I’m not exactly unearthing a new gem by telling you to go here. But sometimes everyone is right. The wood-fired oysters with chili garlic butter were the single best thing I ate on this trip — creamy, spicy, smoky and perfect. The fried alligator bites were also delicious (they taste like chicken, I promise!) and the Louisiana cochon was excellent, though, on our waiter’s recommendation, I also got the rabbit and dumplings, which was savory, hearty and exactly what I needed to fuel myself for a night of drinking.

Bacchanal
This was the first place I went to on my trip, and it’s quite possibly one of the coolest places I’ve ever been to. It’s a wine shop with live music in a gorgeous backyard (seriously, one of my favorite things about New Orleans is how lush and green it is. Plants everywhere! Really warms this plant lady’s heart). I’ve spent a lot of time in the subsequent days wondering why Brooklyn doesn’t have something similar, but I think it’s the kind of magical place that only exists in NOLA.

Beignets from Cafe du Monde
I know, it’s horribly cliche. But the beignets at Cafe du Monde really are that good. They’re crisp on the outside, pillowy soft on the inside, and just barely sweet — hence the mountains of powdered sugar on top. Paired with a coffee (mixed with chicory, another NOLA tradition), it’s an A+ breakfast. Just get there early — we got there before 9 and were seated immediately, but as we were eating, the line grew and grew to ’round-the-corner-and-down-the-block proportions. (Cafe du Monde is also open 24 hours and the beignets make a great post-drinking snack, so there’s always that option as well. We did both and were very very happy.)

Muffalettas from Verti Marte
We stayed down the block from this tiny hole-in-the-wall deli, and had no idea that it’s kind of a big deal. Everyone talks about the muffalettas from Central Grocery (they were invented there), but Central Grocery closes at 5 p.m. and Verti Marte is open all night long. Plus, their muffalettas are serious business — stacked so high with meats and cheeses that one order can easily feed a few hungry people. Related: If Verti Marte sold the olive salad from their muffalettas in jars, I would buy a dozen. It’s that freakin’ good.

Po’boys from Killer PoBoys
While I didn’t visit Killer PoBoys myself, my friends brought back five different sandwiches (I have the best friends) from this popular sandwich shop. They’ve branched out from the classics to feature all kinds of po’boys, including rum-glazed pork belly(!) and sweet potato with a black-eyed pea and pecan spread(!!). The shrimp version takes its cue from bahn mi and was so good that I wanted seconds while still eating the first.

The French 75 Bar
French 75 is located just off the madness of Bourbon Street, but when you walk in, it feels like you’re immediately transported into another era. There are waiters in tuxes, dark wood and brass everywhere and the cocktails are a far (far) cry from a hurricane or a hand grenade. (In fact, head bartender Chris Hannah won a James Beard Award for the drinks he’s mixing up here.) We stopped in for a pre-dinner drink on my actual birthday, and it was the perfect birthday treat. …

Impossibly Crispy Chicken Thighs

Four weeks ago, I started working at Food52. It’s been a whirlwind out of a dream, getting to do all of the things I love most (talk about food, eat food, create video strategies … ) with a team of people who are warm and wonderful.

But let’s be real: the best part is that I get to spend my days staring at recipes. Desserts with mind-bending tricks, cocktails with all of my favorite ingredients, and these chicken thighs, which promise fried chicken-level crunch with none of the messy flouring and deep-frying.

The recipe, which comes by way of Canal House, turns everything you thought you knew about chicken on its head. Instead of searing the chicken in a hot pan, the chicken cooks entirely on medium heat. Instead of then roasting in the oven, the chicken stays on the stovetop, slowly cooking in its own fat until it’s impossibly crisp.

This recipe jumped out to me immediately — obviously the no-frying fried chicken part is a real head-turner, but I also loved that it called specifically for my favorite part of the chicken, the part I will fight children for: the humble but brilliant chicken thigh. Any discerning human with taste knows that chicken thighs are where it’s at, all juicy and flavorful and hard to overcook. Here, they’re prized for their ability to lie flat in a skillet, which allows the fat from the skin to render out more easily, and therefore get crisper.

This recipe goes one step further, using all that rendered chicken fat to crisp up croutons until they’re golden and crunchy and perfect. The original recipe added kale, but I went with mushrooms (and then put the whole thing on a bed of kale), and either way, you can’t go wrong. (You could also probably add your favorite vegetable, if kale or mushrooms aren’t your thing, and be just as happy.)

This is crispy, crunchy, flavorful dinner in a skillet, the kind of cooking we all need heading into *sob* fall, and I feel so lucky to work alongside the geniuses who think up this stuff every day. …

Caprese Panzanella, Revisited

Many many moons ago, I made a caprese panzanella on this blog. It was way back in 2012, when I was but a wee 23-year-old who was just discovering ~~the world around me~~ the glory that is summer tomatoes. Back then, I thought tomatoes needed to be masked, hidden among a mix of sharp onion, salty olives, crunchy peppers and tangy balsamic vinegar. I was doing the most, as an eager 23-year-old is wont to do.

Now that I’m almost 30, I’ve made like Coco Chanel and taken one (many) things off. (I’d say it’s because I’m elegant and refined, but we all know it’s because I’m lazy and busy.)

This version of caprese panzanella requires just 5 ingredients (plus olive oil, salt and pepper): bread, tomatoes, mozz, basil and garlic. It has 5 steps, one of which is “preheat the oven.” It is brilliant, in that it requires so little effort and provides such huge rewards, and now that I’m older and wiser, I’ll never make caprese panzanella another way.

There are basically no rules here, just guidelines. This is the kind of recipe that’s more fun when you use your hands — tearing the chunks of mozzarella, rubbing the garlic, tossing everything with your fingers. You can add salad greens to bulk it out a bit, crushed red pepper for spice, maybe even a little red onion. But just once, be lazy with me and keep things nice and simple. You won’t regret it, I promise. …

Spicy Steak Lettuce Wraps

We’ve officially reached that point in the year when life slows to an overheated crawl. Any sense of urgency seeps, along with copious amounts of sweat, out of every pore, and the extent of my dinner ideas is “cold? crunchy? no oven? cold?” (Even my brain functions more slowly in this swamp-like heat.)

But every now and then, I find a recipe that jolts me out of my late-summer doldrums. These spicy steak lettuce wraps were everything I was looking for — cold, crunchy, no oven — but also spicy, bright, fresh, punchy and surprisingly filling, in a way that didn’t lead me to a bowl of ice cream an hour later.

Steak strips take a quick dip in a bath of soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, toasted sesame oil, and most importantly, chili-garlic paste, fresh ginger and scallions (I LOVE this combo). Then, they get a quick sear in a very hot pan, and that’s all the cooking you need to do.

Meanwhile, let’s talk about the cucumber-carrot concoction that goes on top. Julienned carrots and cucumbers (plus red onion, if you, unlike me, remember to actually buy them at the grocery store) are tossed with a very quick chili-garlic paste + rice wine vinegar + toasted sesame oil dressing that has become my new favorite summer slaw. It’s crunchy and punchy and spicy and tangy and everything I want on an impossibly hot day. Seriously, tossed with a bit of cilantro and a squeeze of lime juice, I think this could be the new salad of my dreams.*

These steak lettuce wraps are an ideal weeknight dinner, since nothing requires much work or time (and you can marinate the steak for less than an hour if you’re in a big rush). But I think they’d also be a fun dish for a small party, setting out all of the individuals components and letting your friends assemble as desired.

I didn’t have any (see: melted brain –> incomplete shopping trip), but topping the wraps with cilantro and/or crushed peanuts would really take things to the next level. Even without them, this dinner is the perfect way to snap yourself out of this heat haze!

*I don’t actually dream about salad, I promise. I save all my dreams for cherry cheesecake bars and bourbon cocktails. …

Slow-and-Low Dry Rub Chicken

One of the best parts of “fun-employment” is getting to do those random things that I never seem to have time for. Total closet re-org? Check. Major plant repotting? Check. Shelves finally purchased and hung? Check and check. This applies to the kitchen too: I finally cleaned out the freezer and pantry, and have been slowly working my way through my very long “must-make” list.

Number one on that list was Smitten Kitchen’s recipe for slow-and-low dry rub chicken. I’ve had my eye on it for years (five, to be precise), but somehow, even though I’ve made multiple instances of the oven spareribs on which this recipe is based, I never got my act together to make the chicken.

Well, I have plenty of time now. And this chicken is so worth the wait. It’s tender and full of flavor, the platonic ideal of barbecue chicken — no grills, charcoal or smokers required. (Blasphemy, I know, but it’s really that good!) I broke my cardinal rule of no wet-brining, and the brine makes the chicken impossibly juicy in a way that has me seriously reconsidering my life choices — or at least my chicken ones.

I used the same dry rub that I use for my spareribs, adapted from Harold McGee’s classic. (Deb’s is also a version of McGee’s but I like mine with more cumin and more spice — that’s the Indian in me.)

The finish under the broiler is the cherry on top, creating a crispy, slightly charred crust. You could skip it if you’re in a rush, but it really replicates that grill experience, minus the whole having outdoor space/watching the sun set as I eat my dinner part. It’s an absolutely worthwhile cooking project, whether you’re fun-employed or not! …

Roasted Shrimp and Pineapple Salsa

Friends, I have news: after more than five and a half years, I’ve left my job at HuffPost. When I started working there, in January 2013(!), I was a wee 24-year-old with very vague ideas of what I wanted to do. Thanks to a newsroom full of opportunities and a creative, talented, supportive team, I leave with a slightly more defined career path, and I’m so excited for my next step: heading up video programming and strategy at Food52.

Very few people get to say they’re doing their dream job, and I feel incredibly lucky to be among them. I’ve turned to Food52 countless times, for recipes, techniques, general kitchen expertise, etc. etc., and I can’t believe I get to work alongside people whose work I’ve read and cooked and enjoyed for years. (I’ll stop fan-girling now, I promise!)

I took some time off between jobs, to really unwind from HuffPost and mentally prepare myself for this new challenge. Having this time to literally do nothing has been weirdly unsettling — I’m not sure what to do with it. So far I’ve read 1.5 new books, watched two movies, tried three new workouts, cleaned … and it’s only been three days!*

Naturally, I’ve also been cooking. It’s been mostly low-key sheet-pan dinners and breakfast smoothies, though occasionally, something more elaborate has snuck in. I’m mostly interested in light, refreshing recipes that can be assembled quickly and eaten outside.

Enter this roasted shrimp and pineapple salsa. Chunks of spicy roasted pineapple and chili-lime shrimp are offset by cool, creamy avocado, and the whole thing tastes perfect on a tortilla chip (though it would also be very good in taco form … please try both and invite me over). If you are one of those lucky humans with a deck and a grill, by all means, you could and should grill the shrimp and pineapple. But I broiled both in my janky oven and was extremely satisfied with the results. This salsa is the kind of recipe that pairs best with a beer and a breeze, so make your summer plans accordingly.

I’ve still got another two weeks of “fun-employment” so I am on the hunt for delicious recipes that can be made while reading / watching TV / gallivanting about NYC. Send me your faves!

*Please also send any and all book / show / movie / life recommendations … I’ve got lots of time! …

Cherry Swirled Cheesecake Bars

Sorry for yet another disappearing act. I’d bore you with the details of where I’ve been (I have exciting news to come on that front!) but in more important news, we have cherry swirled cheesecake bars to discuss. I’m having oven issues, so mine came out a bit … um toasty, but I assure you, they are perfection.

Cheesecake and I have a long and troubled past. I’ve only attempted it a few times, and can rack up only a few successes: a berry cupcake version, a piÃ±a colada version and one white chocolate version that’s kind of cheating since it’s no-bake. This oreo version tasted amazing but looked … damaged, and there have been a few other flops so disastrous that I didn’t even bother to mention them here. So slightly burned but delicious = a win in my book, at least when it comes to cheesecake.

Why did I go down this path, if I’d been burned (ha.) before? I had a handful of juuuuust barely still good cherries in the fridge, plus a big bag of bright shiny new cherries that I couldn’t resist (on sale!), and plans to go to the beach this weekend. So obviously my mind went directly to transportable dessert. While hand pies seemed to be a natural solution, I didn’t really want to mess around with pie crusts. And then I spotted a recipe for cherry cheesecake bars on Bake or Break that seemed too good to pass up. Creamy tangy cheesecake with a tart-sweet swirl of fresh cherry sauce — I had to try it.

Oven issues aside, this is a fairly simple recipe, even though there are a few steps. The only difficult part of the cherry sauce is pitting the cherries, which is a cinch if you have a cherry pitter and a slightly messy, kind-of-weirdly-fun way to pass the time if you don’t. Crushing the graham cracker crumbs is also kind of fun in a get-your-rage-out sort of way (if you have a food processor*, a few minutes worth of work). Everything else is minimal work, and honestly, the hardest part of this recipe is sitting around waiting for the bars to cool enough so that you can dig in. …

Bourbon Blackberry Smash

Raise your hand if it’s been a bit of a crazy year. (I can’t be the only one, right??) Somehow I’ve felt a bit behind on everything, always scrambling to catch up. Work has been a constant swirl of madness, I’ve been dealing on and off with the weirdest health issues (the latest: I injured my back so severely on the dance floor that I was couch-bound for days) and have been having a slight existential crisis about turning 30.

So basically, I cannot wait for summer. Theoretically, life will slow down, right? There will be time for sitting on NYC rooftops or even *gasp* a beach, sipping cocktails and staring at the sunset? Let’s make that a goal — to spend more time staring at the sunset with a drink in hand.

And if you’re going to be drinking, you should definitely drink this bourbon blackberry smash. It shares DNA with one of my summer faves, this blackberry bramble. But while that was all clean and fresh with gin, lime and seltzer, this smash is a bit bolder, with bourbon, lemon and ginger beer. It’s bright and slightly spicy (real ginger beer makes a huge difference here!) and exactly what one needs on a warm sunny day.

Cheers to summer! Hope you get a chance to slow down, sit around and sip a cocktail! …