Minimally Invasive

Gil and I decided to spend our long holiday weekend in Toronto because evidently there aren’t enough great restaurants or tall buildings in New York for our taste. Also, the exchange rate is basically 1:1, there’s no language barrier, and I’ve never been north of the border, so why not visit friends and family and experience a little fine dining in the process?

We only wandered around a little bit (darn these flats!) this afternoon, but that turned out to be plenty of time to experience a national treasure:

Flexibility is the key to a happy marriage. Gil doesn’t complain about picking me up at the train station when I work late, and I don’t complain when he snores like a congested bulldog at night. Also, I suck it up when he changes our dinner plans on the fly by proposing to pick up BBQ from Bourbon BBQ, the new temple of smoked meats in Hawthorne, NJ.

Right. Like I’d ever turn that down.

Tonight, we ordered pulled pork and sausage along with beans and potato salad on the side, but was that good enough for me? Oh, no. Not when I can come up with some way to make things a little more difficult for myself.

I felt like Carolina pulled pork sandwiches, so I threw together a quick vinegar sauce (though I used only one teaspoon of salt instead of the full TWO TABLESPOONS –which must be a typo — called for in the recipe) and tossed it with with an even quicker slaw made of thinly sliced fennel and napa cabbage, sprinkled with brown mustard seeds. I was a little worried that the fennel wouldn’t be so good in the slaw, but it really was terrific and balanced the smoked pork nicely. We piled the pork and slaw on toasted baguette slices and made short work of the mini sandwiches.

Of course, I’m not sure we made much of a dent in the meat overall, so I hope it freezes well — we’re heading to Toronto in a couple of days and it’d probably be confiscated at the security checkpoint, if not sooner.

Simple dinner last night, but it really hit the spot. I spread both sides of a fresh baguette with roasted red pepper and sun-dried tomato aioli, topped it with thinly sliced steak left over from Sunday’s kitchen adventure, and loaded it with arugula.

A good sandwich is hard to beat, even when it doesn’t rise to the level of bacon sarnie.

More non-food links for those of you hungerin’ for something different!

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I’m always up for something new, especially when it comes to food — cooking or just eating it. So when Gil told me about a new gourmet food store that recently opened one town over, I could hardly contain my excitement and rushed there the very next day to see what it was about. Well! Zeytinia exceeded my expectations by a mile and we’ve already paid them three visits in one week. Their olive bar is a thing of beauty and sampling the varieties of honey could keep me busy for a year, easily. But where they really shine, IMHO, is in the produce section. The freshness of the fruits and vegetables alone would beat our local grocery, but they also have a variety I haven’t seen in this area.

As I was deciding between fava beans and cranberry beans (neither of which I’d cooked before), Gil made my decision for me: “Hey, those cranberry beans look like they were designed by Betsey Johnson!” (Reason 1, 375 why I adore this man so.) I only bought a small sampling just in case they turned out to be nothing special. I needn’t have worried, as it turned out. The test batch I made last night was so good, we found ourselves back at the store this morning for more, where I served as an ambassador for the beans, explaining how to cook them to a customer who stopped to ask. All I did was simmer the shelled beans in about 2 inches of water with a couple of whole garlic cloves, some peppercorns, and a few sage leaves. When they were soft but not mushy, I drained them, added salt and olive oil, and let them sit on the counter till they reached room temperature.

The beans had a very meaty, almost umami flavor and played well with a dandelion green salad and grilled skirt steak. I just used my regular old preparation of marinating the steak in oil (avocado, this time — another new purchase), garlic, and fresh herbs, then grilling over high heat.

The avocado oil had a beautiful green intensity you probably can’t see here, and a smoother flavor than the grassy olive oil I usually use. It was a good purchase, I’d say. It made a delicious dressing for the dandelion greens, as well, when mixed with sherry vinegar (to add sweetness to the bitter greens), roasted garlic, and a touch of Dijon mustard.

By the way, cranberry beans lose their beautiful pink swirly flair when cooked, but turn so delicious, the trade-off isn’t painful at all.

Via The Agitator, I found a great Photoshop tutorial that lets you fake the tilt-shift miniaturization look without an expensive lens for your camera. I played around with a couple of my Paris pictures from last October’s visit and got some pretty cool results.

Mini Musée d’Orsay on top, with the original image below:

And, of course, it wouldn’t be a trip to Paris without a visit to the Eiffel tower:

Fun! I’ll try to get a few decent shots in Toronto next weekend with this technique in mind.

Sometime in the past 15 years I developed an allergy to nickel so severe my dermatologist was alarmed by my recent reaction to a patch test. One month later, a red square lingers on the oh, so delicate skin on my back. The doctor assures me it will fade in time, but since I can’t see it, who cares? Oh yeah, that would be my husband, who points it out regularly.

Anyway, now that I have confirmation that wearing any of my old earrings (and a favorite watch, siiiigh) is out of the question, I decided to turn my lemons into lemonade and convert the earrings into pendants! I know I’m hardly the first person to think of this, but I am proud that it occurred to me at 6:15am as I was getting ready for work. So now I have a cute little pendant that’ll be great with that deco trend Lucky promises will be So. Big. This. Fall. And now that the pliers are out, who knows? I may not need to buy necklaces again for at least another year. That’s four whole shopping seasons!

Not to be outdone by mere skin, my sinuses have gotten into the allergy act, too. Some scents make me stuffy (certain florals, mostly), while others cause immediate, searing headaches (like the Paloma Picasso perfume one of the commuters wears on the bus — I’ll be heading to work in a hamster bubble in five years’ time). Unfortunately, the wonderful scrubs Gil and I bought at Sabon fell into the “searing headache” category. They were such luxurious products it was tough giving them up, but Gil grew tired of my bitching moaning cries, so into the garbage they went. Now we use something that works every bit as well, saves us money, and keeps me headache free — 3 parts white sugar mixed with 2 parts olive oil. The only problem is making sure to rinse really well, but it leaves my skin incredibly soft and my alligator elbows disappear every time I use it.

I think I’ve read too many “green” articles — I seem to be all about recycling and repurposing these days.

Alas, I have no pictures of the birthday girl; instead, you get a picture of the beautiful amaryllis she gave me on one of our visits. (As Gil correctly points out, any pictures I did have would pale in comparison to Paul’s, anyway.)

Have a wonderful day, Deb!

The idea of throwing out food is anathema to those of us who grew up in families that maybe didn’t have so much money. My aunts can squeeze a nickel till it bleeds, my dad would rather cut off his left hand than let anything wither in his garden, and my grandma always saved her cooking oil (and bacon grease, natch) because of the starving kids in China. The plight of malnourished Indian children weighed more heavily on my other grandma’s conscience, so she recycled the bread crusts I demanded cut from my sandwiches into her bread pudding. My family was green before green was cool, or something.

So when I noticed a bunch of arugula wilting in the crisper drawer, a container of ricotta’s expiration date fast approaching, and a big hunk of pancetta taunting me from it’s perch, I knew something had to be done. After eating tomatoes every single day for almost a week, a sauce wasn’t at the top of my list, so I threw together an arugula and nectarine salad topped with spicy caramelized pancetta. And yes, in case you were wondering, caramelized pancetta is just as good as you imagined.

The ricotta I felt was best saved for dessert, specifically for a scrumptious-sounding recipe for chocolate and ricotta cupcakes I found while perusing Orangette last week. Since we had all of the ingredients on hand, Gil got to work sifting and mixing. (He’s adding to his repertoire, which is scrambled eggs, chocolate chip cookies, and now these cupcakes.) Though there was a distinct lack of swirl in the cupcakes (for which I take full responsibility, as I was the designated swirler), they were delicious enough to tempt the cupcake gnome from his hiding place. I caught a glimpse of him running away and shaking his fist, a flurry of crumbs wafting to the ground. He seemed to approve of my thrifty ways, if the liner was any indication:

recipe after the jump

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Or … a little less you cook, a little more you relax!

One of Gil’s good friends visited over the weekend, so we bummed around, showed him the sights, consumed massive amounts of pizza, and watched a bunch of entertaining superhero movies. We really know how to show a person a good time.

To stretch our legs and enjoy the gorgeous weather (75 degrees, sunny, and breezy), we visited Ringwood Manor for a couple of hours Saturday. While Gil and Aaron strolled the grounds and caught up, I took my new camera for a test drive. Click on the photo above to check out my Flickr set. Gil wrote more extensively about the visit (as is his wont) and took some incredible photos.