This pasta is freaking phenomenal and incredibly easy to throw together. There’s no real recipe and just a handful of ingredients, all of which you probably already have. I first ran into this dish at a gorgeous little restaurant on East 4th Street, and recreated it last week when my fridge was very nearly bare. I was shocked at how great it turned out. So make this, even if you think it sounds weird. Make it today. Trust me.
First off, my apologies if you visited the site yesterday and were greeted with a blank white page. Somehow, my WordPress update totally failed and erased the blog (which I had backed up the day before, MASSIVE SIGH OF RELIEF). So, we’re back. Now, onto the good stuff. This tart is phenomenal. I made it for dinner with a good friend, before I remembered she is dairy & gluten-free. Oops. Oh well, more for me. Make this baby a day in advance; the goat-cheese custard will need about 12 hours in your fridge to really firm up.
Naming your favorite food. Such a huge question, isn’t it? Now, as someone that fully indulges my insane love for all things edible, you may think that I’d choose something fancy and complicated, requiring fifty stages of preparation and advanced culinary technique. Or something really obscure, that is only found on the north-east corner of a specific street in a tiny town in a country half-way across the world. Maybe something daring, something from which the average person would run screaming, a particularly nasty piece of offal perhaps, or that pufferfish sashimi that just might kill you if prepared incorrectly. It is with a tiny bit of embarrassment (and, to be honest, a tiny bit of pride) that I thus present my favorite favorite FAVORITE food in the world: pizza.
Okay, so I’ll start by admitting that I actually made these delicious fried flowers over a month ago. Unfortunately, the pictures were trapped on my camera while I was upstate and charger-less. HOWEVER, these little lovelies were just so delicious that I’m bringing ‘em to you even though you may be hard-pressed to find zucchini blossoms these days. If you can get your hands on some, definitely give this recipe a shot. With each bite, the delicately crispy exterior gives way to the creamy, melty, herby goat cheese filling…and after several minutes the entire batch will have magically disappeared. So good.
Maybe you are brilliant and possessed enough self control to have made preserves out of your sour cherries. Or, maybe you are like me, and had to buy a jar. Either way, it’s absolutely fantastic paired with rich, buttery, lemon-scented shortbread. Adapted from Martha Stewart Living (December/January, 1995), this dough yields a few less than two-dozen cookies. Filled with tangy and sweet sour cherry jam, you will be shocked at how fast these lovelies disappear.
As I prepare to leave my parent’s lovely, relaxing, air-conditioned home upstate and return to NYC, I’m anxiously squeezing in some last minute baking; recipes I won’t have the heart to over-heat my entire apartment for while August’s unbearable humidity persists. Emma is not much of a chocolate fan (I know, truly alarming) but she is a lemon fanatic, so, being the fab older sister that I am, and pitying her impending return to college cafeteria food, I made Ina Garten’s incredibly luscious Lemon Curd Tart. This is my absolute FAVORITE lemon curd recipe, so definitely whip some up even if you don’t intend to make the tart. Tangy-sweet lemon curd is delicious spread thickly across toasted baguette, swirled into greek yogurt and topped with fresh berries, or, if I’m being completely honest, eaten straight from the saucepan.
I am not one for single-use items. When your entire apartment would fit nicely into most peoples’ dining rooms, you generally cannot afford to give up precious space to a mango-pitter or a strawberry-huller or a corn-zipper. Because, really, you can use a knife for all of those tasks. (And for a bunch of other things as well. Necessary storage space = one knife-shaped spot in the cutlery drawer. See how that works?) Despite all this, I have recently fallen head over heels for a one-trick-pony: an ebelskiver pan. Lest you are unfamiliar with ebelskiver, let me fill you in: spherical toasty little stuffed pancake-popover hybrids, originally hailing from Denmark. You sold yet? How about now:
Yes, I know it’s been a trillion years (five days) since my last post. My apologies. I’ve been cooking like crazy, but hiding from my camera and le blog. I am a rebel like that. In all honesty, I’ve been feeling especially critical of my writing and of my ability to craft interesting little posts for your consumption (ha-ha, get it?). So here I am, highly caffeinated and slightly anxious, presenting you with a lovely al fresco dinner idea. I am currently visiting my family in upstate New York (East Amherst, second-safest town in America anyone?) I bring this up to explain two things: First, my ability to even dine al fresco (no balcony or garden for me in the city, growl) and second, these crazytown plates. Yes, they are decorated with giant blooming cactuses (cacti?) bordered by…blueberries? No, I am not remotely close to understanding it either.
