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Pasta con le sarde

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With another issue of the catalog just about wrapped up, my main goal was to relax this weekend. To that end, I spent a good portion of today reading, wandering around like a zombie, and napping. Waking refreshed and hungry (for tasty human braaains), I cast about my Bloglines folders looking for inspiration from the host of food bloggers I follow. Inspiration struck, as it so often does, at the feed of Molly of Orangette fame. Months ago, she wrote about a tomato sauce recipe, the simplest one in the world that also just happened to be swoonworthy. Since it required only four ingredients — canned tomatoes, butter, onion, and salt — I thought that would make for a perfectly quick and delicious lunch.

And then I realized I had other bits and pieces in my kitchen that would make good additions to the sauce. The basil in my fridge wasn’t getting any younger, so I thought a few leaves would lend a subtle flavor to the dish. Then I remembered the fennel in the crisper drawer sharing space with the Italian flat-leaf parsley, and […]

Fuh.

I was very disappointed to read of Martha Stewart’s plan to fold Blueprint recently, despite my initial lukewarm feelings toward the magazine. Each issue managed to teach me a little something new and always inspired me with its eye candy and functional-yet-beautiful design. To say my sad goodbye, I had the bright idea to cook a recipe from the last issue and frame a post around it; since I’ve been on a bit of an Asian kick lately, the pho from the soup story sounded promising. I knew not to expect authenticity, but expected better than I got.

It all started so well, too. I made the beef stock a day early and it smelled heavenly — rich with chuck roast, bone marrow, star anise, and fish sauce. After looking forward to it all the next day, I got started as soon as I walked in the door.

While the noodles were boiling,

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I assembled the vegetables we’d use as garnish.

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When the noodles were ready, I drained and rinsed them in cold water, then added the thinly-sliced beef

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before pouring the boiling broth over, which immediately began to cook the meat.

Happy birthday…

to my favorite person!

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MWAH!

Morning fun

Have I mentioned how much I hate driving in north Jersey? ‘Cause I do. I really, really do.

On my drive to the bus stop in the morning, I have to make a left turn onto a two-way street that often has a lot of traffic going both ways. Because I didn’t drive for five years while I lived in NY, I’ve become a very cautious driver — one my former self wouldn’t recognize in the least — so I always look both ways at least twice before I make the turn. Well, this morning I somehow didn’t see an SUV driver’s left turn signal before she started to turn onto my street and thought she was just going to continue straight ahead. (You see where this is going, don’t you?) I was looking left again to make sure nothing was coming and started to pull out; had I not stopped immediately, there most definitely would have been an accident that would have been All My Fault. But I did stop with a few feet between us — close enough to give us both a scare, but not so close that my adrenaline started pumping.

So the woman driving the SUV […]

Fingers crossed!

In honor of LSU’s appearance in the BCS title game tonight, I’m reposting this entry from a year ago — mostly as an excuse to share these awesome pictures of my brother-in-law, Tommy (with his son in the second picture). He scored tickets to the Sugar Bowl last year and gave us a preview of his game-day attire, but will be watching from home this evening with the rest of us.

Geaux Tigers!

When I started at LSU 20 years ago this fall (gulp), basketball games were an enjoyable enough way to spend an evening. Ricky Blanton was the big draw and rumors hadn’t started yet about the 7-foot crime fighter with the secret identity, so these events were really easy to get into. Football games were another story.

Game day seemed to double the population of Baton Rouge and most of the imports ended up in the stadium parking lot … early. It was a great time to be a starving college student because you could fill up on all kinds of grilled meats, jambalaya, red beans & rice, and even find a beer to wash it down just by wandering […]

Pork & peaches, and some healthy stuff, too

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Though I hesitate to call it a resolution, we are trying to eat a bit healthier now that the holidays are over. I’m not going to extremes, of course, but I am trying to incorporate more whole grains, fruits, and vegetables into my cooking, so our crisper drawer is full and I’m working my way through it faithfully.

But getting back into the old routine takes time, so I started the weekend completely unprepared for our dining needs. Flipping through the pages of Cooking Light for inspiration, I ran across a wild rice salad that looked completely scrumptious and sounded like it’d be perfect with a little pork. As luck would have it, our freezer is stocked with obscene amounts of pork (and beef. and chicken) thanks to Gil’s company’s annual holiday gift of Omaha Steaks. There was also a jar of peach sauce from our last Trader Joe’s run, so all I needed was a recipe to tie things together. Inspiration for the pork came from the Epicurious website, where I found a recipe for pork with brandied peaches that called to me. I did change the recipe […]

Happy 2008

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I don’t mind messing with tradition on New Year’s Eve by staying in and avoiding crowds, but you’ll never catch me shirking my duty on New Year’s Day — for if I don’t have black-eyed peas and some form of greens to ring in the new year, disaster will surely fall upon the Roth household. And so we filled ourselves to the gills with creamy black-eyed peas for luck and spicy collard greens to attract money into our lives. Maybe it doesn’t work, but boy, are they tasty. And since they seemed to be crying out for some kind of plain protein, I added a poached chicken breast topped with a mustard sauce I made by mixing together Dijon, maple syrup, whiskey, a few drops of Worcestershire sauce and cayenne pepper.

As always, I used the black-eyed peas recipe from The Prudhomme Family Cookbook, and this time followed it to the letter by making my own pork stock. I think it added a depth of flavor to the dish that plain chicken broth just can’t, but if you don’t want to go to the trouble of making […]

My new wonton technique is unstoppable

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Happy 2008, everyone! Keeping with our tradition, Gil and I stayed in for a movie marathon last night rather than endure the crowds in the city and the loooong drive home. This year’s feature: The Lord of the Rings trilogy. (No, really, it was his idea. Something about the big screen HDTV, battle scenes, I dunno. I wasn’t going to argue.) We started late and only got up to about the 45-minute mark of The Two Towers, but it’s a rainy day, so I’m sure we’ll finish what we started before nightfall.

With hours of Middle Earth fun ahead of us, I wanted to make something festive for dinner that wouldn’t require too much time in the kitchen, and after my success with two recipes from Simple Chinese Cooking, I turned to its pages again for inspiration. The shrimp dumplings practically leaped off the page and demanded an audition, so I obliged, despite the potential for disaster — eviscerated dumplings churning in a pot of boiling water isn’t as appetizing as you might think. But Kylie Kwong’s step-by-step photo illustrations of dumpling assembly made the […]