dinner Archives - Page 2 of 5

pasta alla vodka (of a sort)

06.29.2016

The very good news is that we’ve officially moved into a place to call our own in LA (hurray!) and the accompanying not-bad news is that, because we got rid of all our furniture in our move last month, we’re very slowly figuring out how to furnish it (adjusting to new and foreign concepts like What Makes Sense or What Looks Nice and not Where Can It Possibly Fit in Our Tiny New York Space) and in the meantime, still eating standing up at the kitchen counter or on our laps. Personally, I’m tempted by an all-abiding impatience to go ahead and just stuff our home with furniture already, but luckily the perpetually calmer B2 is here to keep me in check, and from ending up with a home that manages to be nonfunctional, haphazard, and overpriced all at once. Still, word on the UPS street is that our kitchen table is on the way! So hopefully I’ll be able to start sharing some new eats and snaps from this sunny West Coast home of ours sometime soon.

asparagus, spring pea, & goat cheese quiche

05.11.2016

For the first twenty-two or so years of my life, my experience with quiches was limited solely to the miniature frozen variety — the ones from Costco that came in boxes of half Lorraine and half Florentine (or, in my mind, half yellow and half green), most often bought for my mother’s potlucks or just for late-night snacks, pale and anemic until you popped them in the oven and warmed them to golden life. (Or microwaved them, in which case they stayed pretty anemic but still tasted delicious.) There’s plenty to love about those already (I still love them, no shame) — tiny bites of buttery crust, giving way to creamy, salty-savory middles with a hint of salty bacon or spinach. So it probably goes without saying that when I finally tried a quiche in all its full-sized, deep-dish glory from a Cambridge bakery a couple of years ago, thick and substantial, stippled with caramelized leeks and smoky from thick-cut bacon and good Gruyere, I was more than sold.

spicy salmon onigiri

05.03.2016

I’m pretty sure you don’t really need a recipe to know how to make these little snacks, which are as simple as they are delicious and are nothing more than rice and lightly dressed salmon wrapped up snug in seaweed. But I’m also convinced that there can never be enough words said about those really easy but wonderful things that are magically more than the sum of their parts, like a ripped baguette with salted butter, or peanut butter on a banana, or ricotta and honey. Onigiri were the very first thing we ate in Japan and the very last, bought in jet-lagged abundance from a convenience store on our first night and then from a counter at the airport right before we left. Something about plain (not even seasoned!) rice and a salty filling, tucked inside snappy, just slightly briny seaweed, makes for the perfect on-the-go snack that’s comforting and homey-feeling, even when you can’t read any of the wrappers and pick your flavors based solely on the color-coded labels and you’re surprised by the fillings every time. (In retrospect, it would have been a good idea to look up this guide beforehand.)

chickpea alfredo with watercress and chives

04.05.2016

The thing about alfredo that plagues me is the same thing that might be said about cacio e pepe, or macaroni & cheese, or carbonara — they’re dishes that I adore with all my soul, all cheesy, carb-y deliciousness, but that I eat woefully infrequently, because I somehow always talk myself into something with a little more greenery or a little more protein (and then I wish I went for the alfredo). Imagine my delight when a recipe came into my life that offered both the satisfaction and bliss of a rich alfredo and the substance of a more protein-packed alternative — instead of cream and cheese, it turns out that soaked cashews (protein!) and chickpea flour (more protein!) can combine with a little nutritional yeast, garlic, and salt and pepper to form, pretty simply, magic. A chickpea alfredo is practically no-cook and all-blender, comes together in a matter of minutes, but is silky-smooth, every bit as creamy as a traditional alfredo, yet simultaneously lighter and more filling. Add in a little watercress and chives for brightness, and even B2, who usually has eyes only for pizza, was so into this rendition of a restaurant classic. Who knew?

“sukiyaki” soba noodle soup

03.16.2016

A few months ago, a couple of friends introduced us to a soba restaurant in Midtown called Soba Totto, and introduced me to a world of wonders. Soba noodles are fast working their way up my list of favorite noodles, with their resilient bite and nutty flavor, and they were never better than in the soups we tried there. I had a duck breast and yuzu soba noodle soup that was all kinds of crisp, smoky and tart in all the right ways, but what really stole my heart was B2’s choice (this happens all the time, because I am that kind of date) — something they called “sukiyaki soba,” soba noodles served in a dark, lip-smacking broth crowded with thinly-sliced pork belly and wiggly tofu, piled high with bias-cut scallions, and, most wonderfully, finished off with a barely-poached egg that melted into the broth to make it extra creamy, rich, and just the slightest bit sweet.

curry puffs

03.09.2016

This week we’ve been reveling in finally getting around to all the things that had fallen by the wayside in the last month or so. B2 led the charge on some direly needed spring cleaning, from finally unpacking our bags from LA right down to dusting everything in sight and wiping down the ceiling fan (which I would never have remembered to do?!), and thanks to him, I finally remember what the bedroom floor looks like. We’ve also been catching up with friends we haven’t seen since 2015, or else catching up on TV shows (just in time for them to go on hiatus — come back, The Flash) or good movies (still crying from Creed) or, very simply, just Sitting Around and Doing Nothing because we can.

cracker-style thin crust pizza!

02.03.2016

So we are currently super into thin crust pizza! I don’t know why the magic of thin crust took so long to dawn on us, but a couple of months ago B2 and I tried a new pizza place in our neighborhood and rediscovered all the perks of it we hadn’t appreciated until now. It’s crackly, flaky, crisp but with a little bit of give, and it takes up so much less belly real estate than doughy chewy regular crust that you can eat, like, seven more slices. Which is clearly the most important part.

oyakodon

01.06.2016

Hi friends! Happy 2016! How are you faring and/or eating this week? I’ve been ping-ponging between something like I must consume the healthiest superfood in the world, my stomach is drowning in butter and please don’t make me go cold turkey, my stomach needs more butter. After a little of each (hi there, Sunday night’s delivery pizza), I think this oyakodon is, happily, somewhere in between — something to comfort my butter-addled belly but still good for it, too. Oyakodon is always what comes to mind when I think of healing comfort food. A custard-y chicken and egg rice bowl, it’s warm, gently simmered, soft and savory. I first had it in the depths of a Boston winter on a sniffly sick day; it was one of our favorite meals in Japan after a rainy morning. It’s a homey, simple back-to-basics meal that just makes you feel cozy and good after a marathon of holiday eating, and especially now that winter has finally landed in New York (and getting myself out the door in the morning is looking like this), I feel like it’s pretty much perfect for that hug-in-a-bowl, comforting-but-nourishing in-between.

miso-glazed scallops

12.15.2015

It’s my dad’s birthday today! My brother and I are patting each other on the back because we enrolled him in a Beer of the Month club for his birthday this year and saved ~~ourselves~~ him from getting something like socks or his fourth Roger Federer cap. His two great loves are beer and tennis (well, and Chinese food), so part of me is wondering how we didn’t think of Beer of the Month before, but most of me is just super glad for the friends who enrolled B2 and me in Salsa of the Month for our wedding gift, because (1) it is totally awesome to get salsa on your doorstep and (2) I definitely nabbed that idea from them.

thanksgiving leftovers “red beans” & coconut rice

11.24.2015

I’m boring when it comes to leftovers. (Strategy: Remove from refrigerator and eat. Alternatively, freeze, forget about, then find three months later and still eat.) My mom, on the other hand, makes magic with them — I can’t remember a single time that she tossed out leftovers in our kitchen, or a time that we didn’t ask for the rest of our dinner to be packed up when we went out to eat. Instead, I can see her poised with an open clamshell container in one hand and a metal spatula in the other, mouth pursed, surveying her wok and trying to figure out how to upcycle last night’s takeout into inevitably more delicious fried rice, or stir-fried noodles, or a simmering pot of soup. Some of her recipes are ones where she even swears by leftovers, like her mapo tofu, which she won’t make unless she’s stir-fried giant prawns the day before and has the fiery-red broth left over. (Don’t tell her I gave away her secret ingredient.)