Adam D. Roberts's Blog, page 17

Love Is Like A Frito Pie

I had some very special guests coming over this past Wednesday and so I spent the weekend before that trying to figure out what to make. My first destination was the top shelf of my cookbook collection, where, as you now know, I keep the books I’m most excited to cook from these days. The book that I reached for was Nancy Silverton’s Mozza at Home which, I’ve come to believe, is Nancy Silverton’s best cookbook.

I own all of Nancy’s books–from her iconic Breads from the La Brea Bakery to The Food of Campanile (which she wrote with her then-husband, Mark Peel)–but this one is really geared towards the home cook, much more so than the others. Sure, it’s nice to know how she makes her sourdough bread (and I made that recipe once from Breads from the La Brea Bakery, almost a decade ago, creating a wild yeast starter with grapes and flour and water in an open Tupperware container… my roommate Lauren wasn’t thrilled), but it’s even better to know how she feeds her actual friends who are coming over for dinner. And as I flipped through the pages, I suddenly found my answer in the least likely recipe you’d ever expect to find in a Nancy Silverton cookbook: her version of Dean Fearing’s Frito Pie.

As Nancy tells the story, she was at a food event where she ran into her old friend Dean Fearing “one of the pioneers of southwestern cuisine” and was surprised to discover him serving chili directly in a Fritos bag. Says Nancy, “I took a bag of Dean’s Frito pie, dug my spoon down into it so I penetrated all the layers, and took a bite. I just loved it–the hot chili with the cold sour cream and crunchy Fritos. At first bite, I knew that I would have to make and serve Frito pies one day in my own backyard.”

To seal the deal for me, one of my dinner guests, Jim (you might be familiar) is from Texas and so this really seemed like the perfect thing to make.

DAY ONE: MAKE THE CHILI PASTE

I started on Monday at the Grand Central Market where I loaded up on chiles (ancho and pasilla), plus cumin and coriander seeds at Valeria’s Chilies and Spices:

This place is a great place to know about, I bought tons of everything (spices, chilies) and the grand total came to $14. No more buying spices at Gelson’s!

Back at home, I began the insane process of making the chili paste. I should tell you here that there’s no way in the world that I’m typing up this recipe, it’s four pages long. So you’ll have to buy Nancy’s book or take it out of the library or find this recipe elsewhere online (sorry). But you’ll get to see lots of inspiring pictures here, so that’s something!

It all begins by toasting peanuts in the oven, then the chilies, and then the cumin and coriander seeds in a skillet which you then grind in a spice grinder (one of my favorite tools in the kitchen).

Next–and this is where things start to get a little kooky–she has you fry strips of tortillas in hot oil to make crispy tortilla strips that’ll get ground up in the paste. If I had to do this all over again, I may have just thrown a few Fritos in the blender instead, but don’t tell Nancy that.

Then it’s just a matter of sautéing onions, carrots, celery, shallots, and garlic in oil…

Adding all of the chilies and ground spices…

And finally beer and orange juice.

You cook that all down until the liquid is reduced by half, then you add in the peanuts and tortilla strips…

…and cook until the liquid’s evaporated and the tortillas are soggy.

I have to say, despite all the steps here, this was actually really fun and smelled really good. Plus I was listening to Tropicalia Essentials, which is a great album to cook to, in my opinion. (I also listened to Rod Stewart Unplugged, but that’s our little secret.)

Into the blender that all went…

I had to add some water to make it blend up.

Then I scraped that into a bowl…

And our Day One work was done. We had achieved chili paste.

DAY TWO: MAKE THE CHILI

At the start of Day 2, I went to Gelson’s and bought the rest of the ingredients, including the most important one.

I also bought the meat for the chili. Nancy calls for beef sirloin, which is a bit pricey, but definitely worth it. As Nancy says: “It isn’t a great cut of meat, but it works perfectly in this recipe. After being cooked for more than an hour in the chili ‘gravy,’ the meat becomes tender, but the cubes aren’t mushy and they don’t fall apart like more tender cuts of meat might. You still need teeth to eat it.”

Most of the work on Day 2 involved browning the meat, the most important step in anything like this (a braise, really), because that’s where so much of the flavor comes from. The secret? Don’t crowd the pan. That means taking your time, and listening to more music. This time around: Promises, Promises and You’re A Good Man Charlie Brown. These are the right musicals to listen to in the fall, by the way. They don’t work in the spring (try A New Brain and Carousel for that).

Once all the meat is browned, you cook onions and scrape up all those delicious brown bits. Then you add all the meat back in…

And all that chili paste you worked so hard to make. (Really, it was nothing. I enjoyed it!)

Stir that all together and then add some blended chiles in adobo…

And cook that all together for an hour and a half, until you have the most glorious chili you’ve ever seen or tasted.

Really, this is incredible stuff. If you just stopped here, you’d be a very happy person. But we’re not stopping here so…

Let it cool, put the lid on, and refrigerate overnight.

By the way, you don’t have to do this over three days; I just did that so I could relax and enjoy myself at the dinner party. Which brings us to…

DAY THREE: TIME FOR FRITO PIE

So there were other things at this dinner besides Frito Pie. I made the Caesar Salad that Nancy recommends you serve with it (heavy on the lime and Tabasco); and I made this Tres Leches Cake from Food and Wine Magazine which I’ve made before and it’s always a hit.

I also went to Gilly Flowers in Silverlake and asked for a bouquet that would go nicely with a Frito Pie. I’d say they did a nice job!

Then it was just a matter of prepping all the toppings: onions, queso fresco, Cheddar, crema, cilantro, etc.

At last the moment arrived and the Frito Pie party began.

First up, the Caesar Salad which Justin very kindly helped me plate (I opted for roasted cherry tomatoes instead of the anchovy croutons because we were about to eat a giant bag of Fritos for dinner):

Laying in bed the night before this dinner, I worried over how I would serve the Frito Pie. Nancy says, “It’s important that you use the smallest bag of Fritos… Obviously, you could also serve the chili in a bowl, though it means more to wash up, and it’s not nearly as charming a presentation.”

The problem? I could only find medium-sized bags of Fritos. Nobody would want that many Fritos presented to them on their plate… what a conundrum!

Until I had a eureka moment. “Eureka,” I said to myself. “We could cut holes in the bags and then dump the Fritos we don’t want into a larger bowl. Then everyone can decide how many Fritos they want to leave behind before assembling their Frito pies.”

And that’s exactly what we did. Jesse led the charge, demonstrating the best way to cut a square into the Fritos bag.

Then into the kitchen everyone came with their Fritos; ladling chili directly top and then visiting the Toppings Bar also known as my kitchen table from Ikea:

Behold, a labor of love if their ever was one. Frito Pie:

What can I say? This was everything I wanted it to be and more. A little like chilaquiles, the Fritos soak up all of that spicy, meaty goodness and then add a great crunch as you’re biting in. Plus, this was a ton of fun to serve at a dinner party. I mean, when else do you hand a giant pair of scissors to your dinner guests and ask them to cut into a giant bag of Fritos before sending them into the kitchen to assemble their own dinner?

The dessert, again, was tres leches cake and really easy to make ahead (in fact, you have to make it ahead in order for the tres leches to soak in). Here’s a picture:

And so, thanks to Nancy Silverton for inspiring me to make something I would never have thought to make on my own. Now the only question is… what to do with all of those leftover Fritos?

The post Love Is Like A Frito Pie appeared first on The Amateur Gourmet.

Everybody Loves Romano Beans

Recently on Twitter, someone named @Bobby Tweeted: “The worst writing online is those quirky 17-paragraph preambles recipe bloggers post before telling you what to put in your fuckin lasagna.”

You might think that a Tweet like this (which has over 12,000 likes and 3,000 RTs) might enrage someone like me who spent over a decade of my life writing quirky seventeen-paragraph preambles before telling people what to put in their f-ing lasagna, but actually, I totally agree with this Tweet. In fact, this Tweet speaks to why I kind of gave up food blogging two years ago. The writing seemed besides the point; I was just becoming a resource for recipes rather than a person whose words mattered. In a screenplay or a script for a TV show, every word matters; in fact, sometimes you get into hour-long discussions with producers or actors about one or two words that you feel strongly about. So when the writing on food blogs started to feel disposable, I lost interest. What’s the point of writing on here if no one really cares about what you’re saying?

This is probably why, in this new iteration of the blog, I’m hesitant to type up the recipes at the end and to make them printable. It’s not that I don’t relate to the desire for a follow-alongable recipe, it’s just that I’d much rather put the recipe in my own words as we move along through it… making the words matter, so to speak. Otherwise, again, what’s the point? My goal is to make it so that at the end of a post: (1) you’ve read something that felt worthwhile; and (2) you understand, on a more fundamental level, how to make the thing I’m talking about. Call me crazy, but I really believe that if you get the IDEA of a recipe, it matters more than getting the actual amounts in a recipe.

Case in point: these Romano beans I picked up from the farmer’s market.

If you were to just skip to a recipe at the end of the post (a recipe from the Gjelina cookbook which you can see here on Google Books), you might miss the concept. Here’s the concept: these beans are best when you cook them for a while. So the Gjelina cookbook has you make a fresh tomato sauce, cook onions along with some garlic and spices (ground fennel and coriander seeds), and then you add the tomato sauce in with the onions, along with some water, and then all of the beans which cook down in the mix until they’re thoroughly cooked through. You top it with lime yogurt which is basically just lime juice and olive oil mixed in with yogurt. Got it?

If you get that concept, you can just make these off the cuff. You can see Romano beans at the market and say, “Oh, I have a general sense of what I might do with those.” And that’s way more important than a recipe. OK, I’m done ranting.

So let’s go through it again. First, a fresh tomato sauce. I had some heirloom tomatoes and cherry tomatoes lying around, so I added them to a pan with lots of olive oil and a pinch of salt.

Because the onions and garlic come later, this is really just tomatoes, olive oil, and salt. You cook that down and when it’s nice and thick you add lots of basil.

Now we scrape that into a bowl and in the same pan (which you should probably wipe out a bit, but not wash) cook half a minced onion in olive oil.

Once soft, you add 3 cloves of minced garlic and 1 tsp toasted and ground coriander seeds and 1 tsp toasted and ground fennel seeds. (If you have ground black lime, which I couldn’t find, add 2 tsps of that too.) Once fragrant, add back your tomato sauce and 1 cup of water (or vegetable stock, which is what the recipe calls for, but I don’t really think that’s necessary). Once at a simmer, add all of your trimmed romano beans (about a pound) and a good pinch of salt.

Let that cook down together, stirring all the while, until it looks something like this…

And that’s that. I served these with seared skin-on chicken breasts also coated in ground coriander and fennel seeds (actually cumin seeds, because that’s all I had, but that’s our secret), drizzling the lime yogurt not just on to the beans, but eventually on to the chicken too. Mint may have been applied as a garnish as well.

See, was that so bad having to read my words instead of skipping to an actual recipe at the end? It was? Well I suppose that’s why I won’t make my career as a food blogger anymore! But at least I’ll feel like my words matter which is what makes writing on here fun in the first place.

* * * * *

Braised Spiced Romano Beans with Yogurt and Mint

from The Gjelina Cookbook

JUST KIDDING!

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A Trip To Bologna By Way of Rossoblu in Downtown L.A.

My friend Toby spent a summer in Bologna during college and over the past few weeks (months?) he’s been talking to me about going to this new Italian restaurant in downtown L.A. called Rossoblu that cooks food from the region. “Yes, we should totally go!” I said in that tone that suggests that there’s a good chance this will never happen. Mind you, I love Toby and I loved the idea of going to a new Italian restaurant in downtown L.A., but the logistics seemed a little tricky. For starters: driving downtown, that’s not fun. Plus I make a lot of pasta at home, did I really need to pay for it at a restaurant? And reading about it online, it sounded very heavy (fried bread? lots of meats and cheese?). But then it was Toby’s birthday and I said, “We should go to Rossoblu!” in a tone that suggested I really meant it. So last night, we finally went.

Not sure how much you know about L.A.’s ever-expanding, increasingly dynamic restaurant scene, but downtown L.A. is home to some of the best restaurants in the country right now: Bestia being the one that most immediately comes to mind, but recently Craig and I had an excellent dinner at Manuela which was like an outdoor restaurant with a patio inside a giant warehouse/art gallery serving Southern food (pimento cheese, cornbread, etc.) with heirloom chickens running around out back. If that description doesn’t paint a vivid picture for you, let me just say what makes L.A.’s dining scene so great right now is how weird / unexpected it all is.

Rossoblu certainly fits right in with its warm industrial atmosphere plopped into the middle of a dystopian cityscape right out of Blade Runner (not pictured: the dystopian cityscape right out of Blade Runner).

We walked in and immediately we were greeted by a bevy of friendly hosts, one of whom showed us to our table. Toby and I studied the menu and Toby confessed that he’d already studied it online. He gently advocated for the salumi board which was described on the menu like so…

Toby explained that cured meats and cheeses are a big part of Bolognan cuisine (it’s where we get baloney) and went on to explain how the Po river brought the salt trade from Venice to these mountainous regions which led to all of this food we were about to eat. We then negotiated over pastas and secondi and asked for the waitress’s help choosing wine (she recommended a Barbera for me that I really liked; I don’t remember what she recommended for Toby because I’m selfish).

Well the salumi plate came out and as you can see from the lead picture, it was epic. It came with this fried bread that felt extra decadent:

To balance things out, I ordered a small salad that came with very bitter greens which was a nice relief from the rich, fatty meats.

In terms of my reactions to those meats, I absolutely loved the salami, which they make in-house. Wasn’t crazy about the head cheese which was just like a big slice of fat, as far as I was concerned (but maybe that’s the appeal of head cheese?) The imported stuff from Bologna was tasty; the mortadella reminiscent of baloney (again, that’s where we get it from). And the prosciutto was amazing, especially when wrapped around a piece of fried bread spread with a little cheese.

Then the pastas came out: we had Nonna’s Tagliatelle al Ragu’ Bolognese. Here’s Toby showing it off:

And here it is up close:

Needless to say, this was most excellent (if anyone reading this can tell me where to get that pasta bowl, I will love you forever) and extraordinarily balanced. That was the thing: it wasn’t drowning in sauce, it was just enough sauce to cling to the pasta… which, according to Molto Mario (which I watch semi-religiously) is just as it should be. Mario always says, “The sauce should be a condiment. The star of the dish should be the pasta itself.” And that’s exactly as it was here.

And same with our other pasta, the Maltagliati with porcini, pioppini (not sure what that is), dandelion greens, sage, Grana, and Saba.

Again, this was so balanced, and I absolutely loved the way the extreme bitterness of the dandelion greens played against the sweetness of the Saba (or reduced grape juice). Bitterness is an underused strategy in the kitchen; I’ll have to try to be more bitter the next time I cook.

We almost got the pork shoulder cooked in milk for our secondi, but that felt like too much after all that meat and pasta, so we went with the chicken cooked under a brick which was very nice:

The only disappointment, really, was the dessert: strangely-textured gelato.

We both thought the gelato was too airy and lacking in flavor. But good thing this Cynar came to the rescue: made from artichokes, it was the perfect bittersweet end to a lovely meal. (Again, more bitterness!)

After we paid the check, they asked us if we’d like a tour of the downstairs (maybe they saw me taking pictures of all the food?) So downstairs we went and we got to meet the delightful pasta-maker Francesco Allegro (he’s @fuori_corso on Instagram) who’s from Bologna and who makes all of Rossoblu’s pasta by hand.

All in all, I’m so glad Toby had a birthday so we finally had a real reason to head to Rossoblu. Not only was it a delicious dinner, it was an education! If you come over for dinner and say, “Boy this food tastes bitter,” you’ll have Toby to blame.

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You Know You Want To Stir Ricotta Into Your Pasta

You’re going to start calling me a broken record on here. In fact, me saying that “I’m a broken record on here” feels like something I’ve said before.

Essentially, I’m going to hit a few of the same themes in this post I’ve been hitting lately: (1) watching cooking shows on PBS; (2) going to McCall’s Meat and Fish. Let’s start with PBS. I watch all of the cooking shows on PBS to get ideas and recently I was watching one I’ve never watched before, Nick Stellino’s show. He’s a jovial Italian man who speaks with a thick Italian accent and with lots of enthusiasm for the food he makes. Recently, he was extolling the virtues of his wife’s pasta. Her trick? She stirs ricotta in at the end. I made a mental note to try that someday. That someday happened on Tuesday night.

I went to McCall’s (actually, looking at my recent posts, I don’t think I’ve mentioned McCall’s, so maybe I’m not a broken record) (oh wait, I mentioned it in the Fun with Chiles post, I am a broken record) and picked up sausage and pasta and canned tomatoes. To be honest, I didn’t go to McCall’s with the idea of buying ricotta to stir into my pasta, but while I was there, I saw that they had nice ricotta so I bought a container and brought it home along with everything else. Of course I paid first. I’m not a thief, geesh!

Not to toot my own horn too much, but this pasta that I made would’ve been pretty incredible even without the ricotta. I started by browning a pound of sausage meat in olive oil:

Then I did as Lidia Bastianich teaches on PBS (here we go again!) and created a “hot spot.” That’s where you push everything aside and create little areas in the oil to cook the other things you’re adding. In this case: sliced garlic and red chile flakes.

Once toasted, stir that all together and add a good splash of red wine.

Confession: I should’ve added tomato paste to the hot spot too, so it could toast, but I forgot to do that. So I added that along with the wine. It’s OK, it’s all going to be fine.

Once that all cooked down, I added a can of cherry tomatoes.

And a big pinch of salt. Do I need to say that? You can always just assume that I add salt when I add an ingredient to anything.

That all cooked down for a while while I brought a big pot of water to a boil with lots of salt (well, not too much, enough to make it taste like a good broth… I learned that from Scott Conant, but not on PBS) and then I dropped the pasta in as the tomato sauce got thick.

Then it’s all about timing. You want to cook your pasta for a minute or two less than the package directions while making sure your sauce doesn’t get too crazy thick. Keep the heat on low once it’s saucy.

Then you marry everything by dropping the almost-cooked pasta in with the sauce and adding a ladleful of pasta water.

Cook that all together on high heat until the pasta’s taken in as much sauce as possible and the bottom of the pan is relatively dry when you drag your spoon across it.

Now’s the fun part… bring on the cheese!

First I added some grated Pecorino for flavor. I didn’t have that much Pecorino, so don’t think I’m stingy. I just didn’t have it.

Finally, it was time to add the ricotta. I thought Craig would get a kick out of doing that (he loves cheese) so I summoned him to the kitchen and had him conduct the grand finale.

(Aren’t his pajamas cute? I got them in Australia.)

OK, let’s zoom in close so you can see how good it is to add ricotta to your pasta.

OK, that’s pretty sloppy looking, but look how nice once I added basil…

This was all so excellent; sort of like a deconstructed lasagna. As Nick Stellino puts it, adding ricotta is like adding cream but not as rich and fatty. So there’s a lightness to the creaminess. I agree. Adding ricotta is a wonderful thing to do to your pasta, which is why I wrote this post. Now try it!

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Fun with Chiles

This will shock none of you, especially if you know me in real life, but I’m something of a wimp.

Roller coasters? Terrifying. Horror movies? As if. (Though I do love Rosemary’s Baby, but mostly for Ruth Gordon). And, in the culinary department, I’ve been avoiding chiles for most of my adult life. Sure, I can handle a few pickled jalapeños in my nachos–and, as everyone knows, they’re a key ingredient in Eggs Adam Roberts–but the idea of cooking with raw, un-pickled, fiery chiles has never appealed to me. Until recently…

I’m a regular, these days, at the Sunday farmer’s market in Atwater Village. Having just been to New York, where I sauntered through the Union Square farmer’s market which, in September, is really at its peak (with gorgeous tomatoes, etc.), it’s fun to notice the things that we get here in California that my east coast brethren have to live without. For example, citrus. Our farmer’s market has tablefuls of lemons, limes, blood oranges, grapefruits, all for super cheap. You won’t see that in New York. (Though New York has something we don’t have: seasons!) Anyway, this is all leading to something that we have here that you guys don’t have there…

Chiles. At least, I don’t think you have that there. I’ve never seen chiles at a New York farmer’s market. But we have tons, currently under netting because of flies, which makes these chiles seem like a colorful, naughty bride. [Note: I realize now that this is mostly a picture of peppers, but the chiles are on the left…]

Maybe it was something in the air, but on this last trip to the farmer’s market, I decided to just go for it and buy a bunch of chiles. And, funny enough, when I got home to read the Sunday Times, there was this article (seen in the top picture) about how chiles are good for you (anti-cancerous and all that). So the universe was telling me it was time to get over my chile-phobia.

Here’s what I made first: a soup kind of thing with Fresno chiles. Observe.

That’s onions, garlic, and chopped Fresno chiles all sauteeing together. To that, I added canned cannellini beans.

And, finally, a chopped heirloom tomato.

Cooked that all down together with some salt and then topped with basil.

Actually, that was less a soup kind of thing and more like the bodega beans that Rachel Wharton once taught me how to make. And they were most excellent; the heat was there, but distributed nicely through the dish, so it was warming rather than punishing. I was really into it.

Next up: a pasta with raw tomatoes, one of my favorite things to make in the summer / end of summer / great tomato period that we’re in right now. Generally, you just chop raw tomatoes (heirloom, preferably) and toss them with olive oil, a splash of vinegar, salt, pepper, and some basil. But this time around, I added chopped Fresno chiles too.

Then I boiled orecchiette in lots of salted water and when it was just al dente, I stirred that into my raw tomato sauce.

Topped with Feta to mitigate the heat, this, again, had just the right balance of chile-heat…

But was I being too wimpy with my chiles? Did I dare try a spicier one? Like the Thai bird chile that the woman who sold me these chiles warned me was “very, very spicy”?

That’s it on the right along with some garlic. I was about to make sausage and clams, on the suggestion of the fishmonger / butcher at McCall’s, who told me to brown some sausage, add some garlic, then wine, and finally clams. What he didn’t know was that I was also going to add THE SPICIEST CHILE IN THE WORLD. (OK, one of the spiciest.)

OK, so I chickened out a little. I didn’t add a whole Thai bird chile. Just a little. I was scared.

Oh, I also went my own way and added cherry tomatoes…

And, finally, the clams…

What can I say? This dinner was pretty excellent (especially with a baguette to mop up the sauce). And, without tooting my horn too much, I think I added the perfect amount of Thai bird chile. Still just a warming heat, but nothing too punishing.

And so ends my post about cooking with chiles. Are you impressed? Do you feel like I need to take it further? Hey, I’m doing my best. I once watched five minutes of The Strangers with Liv Tyler and almost had a panic attack. I can handle Thunder Mountain. But I’ll get there with chiles, eventually. Or maybe I’ll just embrace the fact that when it comes to chiles, scary movies, and roller coasters, just a little goes a long way.

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Berry Blasted Oatmeal

There are two kinds of childhoods to have in America: the one where you’re allowed to have sugar cereal and the one where you’re not.

I’m the product of the former sort of childhood and Craig’s the product of the latter. If scientists were to study us to see how my consumption of Lucky Charms, Corn Pops, and Frosted Rice Krispies (yes, that was a thing) and Craig’s non-consumption of these breakfast sugar bombs affected us in later life, they probably wouldn’t be surprised to learn that I have an enormous sweet tooth and Craig usually wants to skip dessert. Also, I do crossword puzzles in pen, get to the movies twenty minutes early, and I almost always choose escalators over elevators when given the choice. Whether this is the result of eating sugar cereal as a child is anyone’s guess.

The point is, as a conscientious adult, I’ve struggled to dial down the sugar in my breakfast. That means more eggs, less pancakes; more oatmeal, less brown sugar mixed in. I also try to buy berries every Sunday at the Atwater Village Farmer’s Market because they’re naturally sweet and they taste good mixed in with yogurt and just the teensiest bit of granola. Also, my 95 year-old Uncle Jerry says the secret to his longevity is eating berries every morning.

This morning, though, the idea of just plain berries in yogurt with granola sounded boring. And plain oatmeal sounded boring too. So I decided to shake things up a bit… and thus my BERRY BLASTED OATMEAL was born.

Here’s what I did (and there won’t be a printable recipe at the end, so pay attention!) (Are you mad?) In a pot, I added ONE TABLESPOON of butter and ONE TABLESPOON of brown sugar:

I realize there are some health nuts out there who will see that and write a comment along the lines of: “OH MY GOD HOW COULD YOU SAY YOU’RE CONSCIENTIOUS AND THEN PUT A WHOLE TABLESPOON OF BUTTER AND A WHOLE TABLESPOON OF BROWN SUGAR IN YOUR OATMEAL YOU MONSTER?!?!?!” To these people I say: middle finger emoji.

Now, you crank up the heat and let that brown sugar cook with the butter for a second until it’s a bit combined and bubbly:

To that, add a bunch of berries. How many berries? As many as your heart desires. I added the whole carton of blackberries, about half a carton of raspberries, and same with the blueberries:

Add a pinch of salt, crank up the heat, and then add a squeeze of orange juice or lemon juice, whatever citrus you have lying around. Just not grapefruit, that’d be weird:

You could also add some booze here like Brandy, but that’d be a totally weird thing to do at 8:30 in the morning, so I’m not saying that I did it. But you could do it (just be sure to pour the brandy into a little measuring spoon first so you don’t pour directly from the bottle over the open flame, or you really will be berry-blasted):

Let the berries cook until the liquid is super syrupy and the berries are mostly broken down:

Then pour the berry compote (because that’s what this is, really) into a separate bowl:

Then, in your now-empty berry pot, add a cup of water:

Bring that to a boil with a pinch of salt and then add half a cup of old-fashioned oats (this serves one, btw):

Stir that in, lower the heat a bit, and cook until your oatmeal’s thick and there’s almost no liquid left. It’ll be a cool pink color:

Pour that into a bowl and then drizzle your compote over the top. Sprinkle on some fresh berries and behold…

… a berry-blasted breakfast that has just a little bit of butter and a little bit of sugar. If you start doing crossword puzzles in pen, showing up to movies twenty minutes early, or riding escalators over elevators, you’ll have this oatmeal to blame.

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A Bold New Vision For My Cookbook Collection

Since you last knew me, I’ve developed a few food-related obsessions. The first one is plates. I collect vintage plates now on Ebay and Etsy and I have quite a collection (OK, here’s a peek on Instagram). I’m also obsessed with old cookbooks, usually ones that have historic value (The Lutece Cookbook, for example) but sometimes I purchase cookbooks that are pretty campy and semi-historic (The Uta Hagen Cookbook, The Liberace Cookbook, The Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous Cookbook). Those collectible cookbooks held the highest position on my old cookbook shelf, a shelf that was beginning to look like a real mess. Here’s what I’m talking about…

Even Mr. Lolita was scandalized.

So this past weekend, I took it all apart. Every book came out and I laid them out on various tables and chairs, though I didn’t do the whole “spark joy” thing. I made that mistake once before and accidentally gave away half my not-food-book collection. But that’s a story for another time.

Looking at all my cookbooks spread out, and then at the empty shelf (which Craig purchased at H.D. Buttercup and which he gladly AHEM reluctantly donated to my kitchen back in 2013) I decided that it was time to shake things up.

The former organization prioritized the vintage/collectible/campy stuff on the top shelf, the things I hoped people would enjoy rifling through at dinner parties. That never really happened. Then there were the staples on the second shelf, spilling down to the third shelf. On the bottom shelf, dessert books.

This time, though, I decided to map things out differently:

That’s right, no more vintage/collectibles at the top… from now on, the top two shelves would be VIPs!

Meaning: the books I’m most excited to cook from RIGHT NOW.

Not sure if that’s obvious to everyone–to put the books you’re most excited to cook from at the top of your cookbook shelf–but to me, it’s a definite game changer. Now when I mosey into my kitchen, I see the books that I’m most psyched to see at the very top. Let’s take a closer look:

These are truly my top-tier cookbooks right now, the ones I’m most likely to cook from if you’re coming over for a dinner party. You might spy Ottolenghi’s new dessert book, Sweet, in the mix; yup, that’s a VIP! But there are some unexpected ones, too: Donald Link’s Down South, Alfred Portale’s Simple Pleasures (where I got the recipe for the best soup I’ve ever made), The Food of Campanile (which Nancy Silverton wrote with Mark Peel, back when they were married and owned a restaurant together). But the book I’m happiest to own right now is this one…

Margot Henderson is married to Fergus Henderson, the British chef famous for cooking all the parts of the animal (I ate at his restaurant St. John when I was in London) and who wrote a book called Nose To Tail. Well as wonderful as that book is (it’s also in my collection), I have to say I’m a bigger fan of Margot’s book. It’s bright and funny and does something that no other cookbook does that I’m aware of: it scales its recipes to various sizes depending on how many people you’re feeding. More than anything else, it’s the book I’m most excited to pull off the shelf these days just to spend time with it.

One tier down, you have the other VIP books. Please don’t judge them unfairly for not making the top tier; it’s like getting a silver medal at the Olympics. These books are still at the Olympics. Give them a break.

These are all solid books, with some novelties mixed in (Ottolenghi’s first book, for example, a gift that my friend Lauren gave me years ago, before Ottolenghi was a name, and I was like: “Umm, thanks!” Little did I know it’d be a SECOND TIER COOKBOOK someday). I’m particularly excited about cooking from Every Grain of Rice (which, weirdly, I keep putting off), The Big Sur Bakery Cookbook, and My Two Souths (already made the fried chicken from it; it was pretty special).

Now let’s talk about the third tier. Things changed from my original plan: dessert books moved up a shelf and now share space with the warhorses. These are the books that’ve been with me the longest, in a way… the Inas, the Marios, the Lidias. These books are still stalwarts in the kitchen. I’ll pull down an Ina anytime I want to make a solid meal without too much fanfare. And Mario’s always a good resource for authentic Italian, as is Lidia. The dessert books–the ones that SURVIVED–are on the right.

And finally, we have the classics. These are now on the bottom shelf because I’m thinking of the bottom shelf more as a library, rather than the place I’ll go to first when I have people coming over. I think that makes sense. Gone are the novelties–Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous AND The Two Fat Ladies Cookbook are now in our living room (hope Craig doesn’t notice)–and Uta’s in my nightstand. There are some real treasures on this bottom shelf…

Come into the Kitchen by Mary and Vincent Price, The Cooking of Southwest France by Paula Wolfert, The Graham Kerr Cookbook (he was The Galloping Gourmet long before I was The Amateur Gourmet), Veal Cookery by Craig Claiborne, When French Women Cook by Madeleine Kamman (that’s one of my favorites), Simple French Food by Richard Olney, The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook, and The Breakfast Book / The Supper Book both by Marion Cummingham. They may be bottom-tier books geographically speaking, but these are top-tier cookbooks by all other measures. And I’m glad they’re all down there for me to peruse on lazy Sundays of the future.

So behold: my newly organized cookbook collection!

And to all of the cookbooks that didn’t survive the reshuffling, please know that you’ll always hold a special place in my heart. Just not on my shelf.

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Tahini Chocolate Chip Cookies

I know I’m late to the party with this one (the party being the “put tahini into your desserts” party) but I’ve also not been blogging for two years, so cut me some slack!

The truth is, during my blogging hiatus, I was much more likely to make recipes that I’d already made before than to try new ones. That was part of the relief of not blogging: there wasn’t this sense of, “I’ve got to feed the beast.” (Sorry for calling you a beast.) But now that I’m back in the saddle, I find myself thinking of you, my beautiful beast; and so when I had friends coming over for dinner the other night, I decided not to make my usual chocolate chip cookies. I decided to make the kind with tahini.

The recipe I turned to was this one by Julia Moskin. The tahini I turned to was the one Michael Solomonov recommends in his Zahav cookbook: Soom (which you can buy on Amazon).

There’s really not much to this recipe: you beat your butter the way you normally would, only you add tahini to the mix. Sugar, vanilla, eggs, you know the drill. At the end, you add lots of chopped chocolate (I may have added more than the recipe suggested; sue me).

The nice thing is, the dough has to rest, so it’s a good thing to make the night before a dinner party (which is what I did). Here’s the dough pre-refrigerator:

The next night, as I fed chicken to my friends Eric, Sean, and Tim (who you may recognize from the New York post… his new book, Life Is Like A Musical, comes out this week!), I let the cookie dough come to room temperature out of the fridge, to make it easier to scoop. (I also pre-heated the oven to 325. Why am I saying this in parentheses?)

So after the chicken was et, into the kitchen I went to go a’scoopin’:

Then into the oven they went and I let them go until they were nice and brown all over, even though the recipe is pretty strict about taking them out while they’re still pale in the middle.

So what’s the verdict?

The verdict is: GUILTY OF BEING AMAZING!

Seriously, the tahini adds so much flavor. That’s basically the best way to describe it: cookie-wise, because they were warm out of the oven, they were gooey and soft and oh-so-good. But then the tahini flavor kicks in, and you get this deep, nutty, toasted quality that’s pretty transcendent. Yeah I used the word “transcendnet.” But I couldn’t spell it the second time.

So the moral of the story is… because you guys exist, I made cookies with tahini in them, and my life is better because of it. So thank you.

[Once again: the link to the recipe.]

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A Most Excellent Breakfast Taco

One reoccurring theme you’ll discover on Amateur Gourmet 2.0 is that I watch a lot of PBS cooking shows. I learned how to make a daiquiri watching Simply Ming, and then, watching Rick Bayless’s show, I learned how to make a most excellent breakfast taco.

If Ned Flanders became human and grew obsessed with Mexico, he’d have a show a lot like Rick Bayless’s. There’s an “aw shucks” charm to Bayless, but also a huge breadth of knowledge, which–at the end of every episode–he translates into something you can do at home. (Some have accused Bayles of cultural appropriation, but I don’t think that’s true of his show: most of it is a platform for Mexican chefs to show off what they do.) Anyway, this breakfast taco…

The main ingredients are all pictured here:

Well, except the tortillas and the eggs. These are just the ingredients for the salsa, which is really a matter of taste: chop a tomato or two. It’s prettier if you use heirloom tomatoes. Then add some chopped red onion. And, the key ingredient, a finely minced habanero (less if you don’t like spicy, more if you do). Before Bayless’s show, I was scared of habaneros; but using it here, it added so much to the flavor of the dish, a kind of fruity heat (the kind of heat I generate too). Add chopped cilantro, FRESH lime juice (no bottled, please), a glug of olive oil, and a pinch of salt.

(You’re going to ask for a recipe at the end, but really this is just to taste: trust yourself!)

Once you have your salsa, you can do your eggs. Bayless heated a little olive oil in a pan and then cracked the eggs (two) directly into it, breaking up the yolks as they cooked so you get streaks of yellow and white, which I thought was pretty cool (don’t forget salt and pepper):

While that’s happening, you get to do my favorite thing to do in the kitchen: set something on fire!

Lay your corn tortillas (buy the best you can get, look in the refrigerated section) directly on the gas burners and turn on the heat. Watch as they char around the edges and flip, repeatedly, with tongs, until they look something like this:

That’s it… it’s just a matter of assembly from there. Lay in your eggs, top with your salsa, fold, and eat right away. Rick Bayless added extra cilantro to his. He really likes cilantro.

And there you have it. A most excellent breakfast taco, indeed.

P.S. If you really want a recipe, here’s a link to the one on Rick Bayless’s site. Turns out, he doesn’t use olive oil… but I did. And I’ll live with that mistake for the rest of my life.

P.P.S. Just realized, looking at the picture, that I also added crumbled queso fresco. Really, I’m the worst at this.

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Saved By A Boston Shaker: A Perfect Lime Leaf Daiquiri

One of the best things about starting this blog again is the help that I get from you, my loyal readers.

A commenter with a wonderful name, Adam, chimed in on my last post about cocktail-making (see: “The Time I Made A Lime-Leaf Infused Daiquiri But Couldn’t Open The Cocktail Shaker”) and suggested I try a Boston shaker. I read up on it, and the concept made sense to me: instead of a vertical, tightly-sealed bullet, the Boston shaker works at an angle. At least that’s how it seemed. Then I got confirmation of that yesterday when I popped into Barkeep in Silverlake to ask all about it…

And sure enough, Boston shakers are what they sell there (along with lots of other cool cocktail-stuff):

One of the men who worked there demonstrated the idea: you shove the top piece in at an angle and listen for it to make a seal. I suppose the angle creates a greater risk that you’ll slosh liquor all over yourself if you don’t close it correctly, so I practiced a few times, and then paid the bill, and headed home to try it out.

Actually, first I did work: this happened at 3 o’clock. I’m sure some of you drink cocktails at 3 o’clock, but I’m a respectable member of society, thank you very much.

So at 3:30, I headed home to make the cocktail. (Just kidding: this happened at 6:30, right before Jeopardy.)

Everything from the previous cocktail post still pertains, except for the shaker. Though this time I doubled the recipe: 4 ounces clear rum, 2 ounces fresh lime juice, 1 1/2 ounces lime leaf-infused simple syrup.

Into the Boston shaker everything went, along with some ice…

Then I wedged the top piece in aggressively at an angle, listening for the WHOOSH of the seal. Well it’s not really a WHOOSH. More like the sound a vacuum cleaner might make if you jammed it against your forehead.

And then I SHOOK SHOOK SHOOK, like Tom Cruise in Cocktail, and I knew my seal was good because I didn’t get any liquid anywhere.

(Tom Cruise seems so creepy in that new movie trailer, don’t you think?)

At last, the moment of truth: the strain into the coupe.

Worked like a dream. I love my new Boston Shaker! Thanks Other Adam.

I sliced a little lime garnish and put it onto the edge to make it pretty:

As for the taste, it was nice and cold and icy in the way a shaken drink should be. Apparently, a daiquiri tests the mettle of any great bartender (I think I said that in the other post), so now that I have a Boston shaker, my mettle is off-the-charts.

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