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Milan through day 2

It was a gray and drizzly Sunday in Milan, but we didn’t let that stop us! After napping for five hours when we got in yesterday (no sleep on the plane, unfortunately), and sleeping for ELEVEN hours last night (yay, Nyquil!), we set off to explore more of the city today. Milan isn’t really what I always imagined when I thought of “Italy” — quaint villages, winding roads (ok, they do wind a bit here, but not uphill or unpaved), open-air food markets, or areas that don’t resemble Paterson, NJ — but it IS a big, bustling city and enough like NY that we feel perfectly comfortable here. The architecture really is truly hideous in many cases, just like we were warned. The people are effortlessly stylish, which confounds us both, but Gil more so — I think he’s used to being one of the more attractive men on the mean streets of Ringwood. Me? I don’t worry about it so much, but I don’t think the women here like me. I’ve gotten some awfully judgmental stares.

Nothing much to say about the food yet. We got some crappy pizza at a tourist trap near the Duomo yesterday (You don’t […]

Getting there

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Still under the weather, friends, but I did manage to cook one meal this week! Poor Gil, it’s been takeout (hot and sour soup, mostly) or indoor picnicking for the past couple of weeks and I’m sure he’s tired of it. But hey, we’re leaving for Milan in a few hours — I’m positive we’ll be able to scare up a few amazing meals while we’re away.

Growing up, I never developed much love for shrimp. We always had a ton of it in the freezer, so whenever Mom was feeling uninspired, a shrimp dish appeared on the table for dinner. Now that I’m older and live in an area where the little buggers are more precious, I feel more appreciative of them, but I think I inherited my mom’s predisposition — whenever I’m not feeling up to cooking, shrimp make an appearance.

This time I marinated the shrimp (split and cleaned, but still wearing their shells) in a wonderful Moroccan grilling paste from Williams-Sonoma which I can’t find on their website. Anyway, the ingredients are basically what I would’ve blended up myself, but were ready to go without any real work on […]

Hey there

Yep, I’m still alive. I’ve really neglected things around here lately, but I’ve been fighting a sinus infection for over a week now and food just isn’t something I’ve been interested in. Now sleep, oh, that excites me. But I expect to be perfectly healthy again by the time we leave for Milan — in less than a week!

Boy, do I have some packing to do…

The dish that tastes you back!

I’ve had tongue on the brain for about a month now, itching to try it out in my own kitchen/smoker, but have been deterred by travel or unkind weather every weekend. Can it be mere coincidence that just this very today the NY Times publishes an article singing tongue’s praises and even gives a shout-out to a Mennonite grandmother within?

If that isn’t a sign, I don’t know what is.

An Amy-proof dessert recipe

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Let’s say you’re interested in making a certain dessert, a dessert that sounds so delicious there’s no way you could possibly wait until next weekend to prepare it. Let’s also say you don’t have the tart pan specified in the recipe, but are able to find mini tart pans at a local store. You’d try to make the recipe, anyway, wouldn’t you? Don’t leave me hanging, here. You would, right?

Well, I did, anyway. Perhaps I should’ve done the math to make sure I was using the proper number of tart pans. Or perhaps I should’ve eyeballed it better and realized the dough could stretch to five pans instead of the four I decided to use. Perhaps, schmerhaps. What’s done is done. This is the tale of my peach and thyme polenta tarts.

I started with the crust and things seemed to go well. The texture felt right and tasted like a good combination of savory and sweet, so I separated the dough into three sections before chilling them in the fridge. I realized a short time later that the dough would probably stretch into four tart pans, so I made adjustments on the […]

This one’s for you, Dad

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Despite my well-documented love of the other white meat, there’s a cut of pork I don’t often cook — tenderloin. Pigs have been put on a diet over the last 20 years and are much leaner as a result. (I’ve even read that a trimmed pork tenderloin has less saturated fat than an equal portion of skinless chicken thigh, which is easy for me to believe.) But what’s good for our hearts isn’t necessarily great for our tastebuds or enjoyment in the kitchen — the tenderloin is a little temperamental to cook these days, as the time between undercooked and shoe leather grows ever smaller.

But I needed a project this weekend, so I put my mind to cooking a tenderloin in a way that would give it some wiggle room. My sage plant has been out of control for the past couple of months and this seemed like an ideal occasion to prune it a bit, so I coated the tenderloins with a lovely sage and walnut pesto.

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Then, in a riff on one of my preferred ways to cook loin*, I wrapped […]

Leave it to a Cajun…

to know his way around a shrimp recipe. If you haven’t yet clicked on the new Chadzilla cooking link at right, you’re in for a treat. I discovered his site a few weeks ago googling god-knows-what and stuck around for his love of scientific cooking and plain old enthusiasm for good food.

One of the techniques he trumpets is sous vide, but I’m too wary of trying it in my own kitchen, so the next best thing, I figure, is poaching. As it turns out, he wrote about poaching shrimp in olive oil with preserved lemons — it sounded like something I could probably attempt with some success, and I’m happy to say it was really delicious.

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Poaching the shrimp gave them a very delicate, almost confit-like texture (as promised). After letting them soak in the poaching oil for about 8 hours, I wrapped them with prosciutto and grilled them lightly for about 30 seconds, just long enough to warm them through and crisp the meat on one side.

The shrimp promised to be very rich, so I thought I’d cut through some of that richness with a salsa verde from an old issue of […]

Grazie mille, maestro

Am I ever glad we went to bed at the half

It was certainly an inauspicious start for my boys.

But oh, how happy I am that the NFL season has officially begun! If you need me on a Sunday from now until January, just try:

Amy Roth
c/o Large Sofa, Living Room
Roth Manor
Ringwood, NJ 07456

Of course, it’s likely I’ll be spending some time with Terrence Howard as well — smoked meats pair so nicely with the pigskin, after all.

Mostly meatless meal

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I picked up some broccoli rabe at Zeytinia over the weekend and needed to do something with it, and soon. A bulb of fennel was keeping the rabe company in the fridge, so I started formulating a couple of recipes. Upon doing a little research, I realized most of the heavy lifting had already been done by better cooks than I (though I was mostly on the right track), so tonight’s dinner came together quickly and turned out to be awfully good.

The beans you see above were a riff on a recipe in Super Natural Cooking, by Heidi Swanson of 101 Cookbooks. It’s the first thing I’ve made from the cookbook, but the pictures alone are worth the price of admission. Wow. She’s so passionate about food, healthy cooking, and communicating it beautifully to her readers. If you can’t tell, I have a bit of a blog-crush.

Anyway, I made a few substitutions based on what we had in the house, but it turned out great, anyway. I’d probably go ahead and sauté the onions and garlic in olive oil before adding the beans next time, but otherwise would follow the […]