Adam D. Roberts's Blog, page 18

A Week in New York with Meals at Pearl Oyster Bar, Mimi, Flora Bar, Daniel, Bar Bolonat, Union Square Cafe, Cafe Altro Paradiso, Hearth, and King

Craig’s in the middle of editing his new movie ALEX STRANGELOVE for Netflix (can’t wait for you to see it) in New York and though I planned to just stay in L.A. for the duration of the edit, two things did occur to me when he asked me to come out for a week: (1) it’d be good for our marriage for me to support and nurture Craig through the difficulties of the editing process; (2) I COULD EAT AT A BUNCH OF NEW YORK CITY RESTAURANTS!

I won’t tell you which was the more compelling factor, but there I was, last Monday, arriving at JFK and taking a cab into the city.

Craig was doing film-related work in the Village and so I decided to drop my stuff off on the Upper East Side (where we were staying) and to take the new 2nd Avenue Subway to Union Square, and then walk over to the Village, grabbing some dinner on the way.

Monday night is a great time to fly into New York: not only was the airport pretty empty, restaurants too (at least at the end of September) were only half-full. As I wandered through the Village, I found myself drawn to Cornelia Street and back to an old staple that’s one of my favorite New York City haunts and has been for years: Pearl Oyster Bar.

There’s a certain kind of hunger you achieve when you travel that makes for the most sublime eating experiences when you finally sit down. I think the greatest bite of my life was when I drove from San Francisco to Napa on my book tour, a drive that took forever (I hit lots of traffic), and I decided to go straight to Cindy’s Backstreet Kitchen, where I sat at the bar, had a glass of wine, and a sublime Caesar salad.

Well: here at Pearl I did exactly the same thing, only this Caesar salad was the stuff of poetry.

The Pearl Caesar has a consistency unlike any other Caesar I’ve ever had; it’s positively shellacked in briny dressing (I mean that in the best way) and I think the richness is a result of gently cooking the egg before emulsifying it (I have the Pearl Cookbook and I seem to remember that step in the process). Also brilliant: the croutons are made of English Muffins. This, plus a glass of Gruner Vetliner, was the most excellent first bite of New York City; chased, of course, by a bowl of impossible-to-photograph-well Clam Chowder:

The next day, I had lots of work to do, so holed up where I was staying and got a mediocre toasted everything bagel from Pick-A-Bagel on 2nd Avenue with lox spread, tomato, and onion, which–despite being mediocre–was still amazing because it was a bagel in New York and reminded me of the kinds of bagels I’d eat growing up.

That night, we were meeting up with a new friend; Broadway star GIDEON GLICK who you may have heard on the Spring Awakening cast recording (“I love you Hanshel!” I know the thing by heart because I cook to it all the time) or seen in his star-turn in Significant Other. We started at the Washington Square Hotel Bar, one of Craig’s favorite bars in New York, partially because it’s the least glamorous place you can imagine.

Each of us got a Manhattan which was so strong but so right at the same time (the room was spinning when I went to bed that night, I blame this):

Then it was off to Mimi, a restaurant I learned about through reverse dinner reservation engineering. See, in the olden days, I’d figure out a restaurant I wanted to go to and then clamor for a reservation. Now I just use the apps–OpenTable, Resy–and see what’s available and then read about the places that are available to see if I’m interested. On Resy, I saw a table available at Mimi, so I read the Pete Wells review, which was mostly positive, and the New York Magazine review, which was even more positive. So off to Mimi we went:

This really felt like a restaurant in Paris, from the cramped tables to the not-warm, but passionate service. Our table was so cramped, it almost felt like we were at a table for five with the people sitting next to us; this restaurant isn’t for the faint of heart. Here’s Craig and Gideon to illustrate:

OK, that doesn’t look too cramped after all. It was also very dark.

Which makes these pictures not-so-great, but the chicken liver mousse was most excellent:

Wow, that’s a huge picture but that’s because I batch-edited all these pictures so they’re all 640 width, even the vertical ones. Sorry!

Confession: I don’t remember much else of what we ate there, and the pictures are really bad, so here’s just one more…

That thing in the background was delicious: cheesy, gooey, carby. I don’t remember what it was and the online menu doesn’t match our meal there.

(Maybe you can tell, I’m not sure I’d rush back to Mimi, but let’s not make a big deal about it.)

The next day, I went to go see a much-ballyhooed play, A Doll’s House Part 2 which was in its final week. I missed Laurie Metcalf, who I love so much, in the lead part, but Julie White was wonderful and this was a terrific, thought-provoking play.

Afterwards, the restaurant Daniel called (where we were supposed to have dinner; more on that in a bit) with news that a water main broke outside the restaurant and that they’d have to reschedule our dinner to the next night. (They were very nice about it.)

So after Craig finished with work that day, he came back to the Upper East Side and I led him to Flora Bar, a restaurant I was most curious about, in the old Untitled spot at the former-Whitney now Met Breuer:

Craig’s a huge fan of Ignacio Mattos and his restaurant Estela on Houston in SoHo. It has a dish that’s truly one of the most memorable things Craig and I have ever eaten: an endive salad that buries a granola made of walnuts, breadcrumbs, anchovies, and chunks of cheese. It sounds bizarre but it’s oh so good.

So Flora Bar, also a Mattos restaurant, was an exciting thing to find near where we were staying. And on this lovely New York night, there was a table right outside. Get ready for another huge picture!

Here are pictures of everything that we ate, some of which will be self-explanatory (a Caesar with the most amazing croutons soaked with an orange-flavored oil) some of which won’t (a steak that you can’t see because it’s covered in mushroom disks):

That dessert was maybe the most mind-blowing of all: it was a disc of frozen coconut ice cream on top of of something made of mango, but the craziest part was that it tasted like it was infused with jalapenos. There was heat.

At the end of our trip, which we’ll get to eventually (I hope!), Craig and I agreed that our dinner at Flora Bar was probably our favorite meal of the week. The only downside: the price. It’s a little crazy expensive, especially that steak, but I think it’s worth it.

Now: the next day. I continued to work on the Upper East Side, and needing a break, I wandered up to the famous Kitchen Arts & Letters, a culinary book store rivaled only by Bonnie Slotnick’s downtown and Omnivore Books in San Francisco.

I spent about an hour there (I could’ve spent HOURS there) seeking out something that would be impossible to find anywhere else. Eventually, I think I found it:

The store’s proprietor asked if I’d read about the recent revelations regarding Roald Dahl; I said I hadn’t. He paused, saying that if I went home, read about them, and decided to bring the book back, he’d give me a refund. So naturally I went home and read some stuff about him; I guess he was anti-Semitic? Though Steven Speilberg had to address that when he did The BFG and he seemed to think Dahl was more of a provocateur who liked to get a reaction out of people. And, frankly, if I had to purge my book collection of hateful writers/creators I’d have a very thin book collection indeed (bye T.S. Eliot, etc). I’m all about separating the artist from the art, or the cookbook, as the case may be.

Now: on to Daniel!

Why did we go to Daniel, one of the most lavish restaurants in New York?

Blame Bette Midler.

We had a tiny windfall a few weeks ago (someday I’ll tell you about green envelopes; which equal residuals in the entertainment biz… ok, I guess I just told you about them) and upon receiving one, I made up my mind: when I went to visit Craig in New York, we’d go see Bette Midler in Hello, Dolly!

Now there’s a lot you have to know about this: I love Bette Midler, always have. Going to Beaches with my grandmother is one of my most prominent movie memories (especially since my grandfather had just died and I chose Beaches in order to cheer her up… oops!) I’ve seen Bette Midler many times in concert; once with my parents when I was in middle school, wondering why there were so many men at the concert?

But Hello Dolly! is not my favorite. I once saw my college boyfriend in it in Summerstock in Birmingham, Alabama. It was cute, but once was enough. Then I saw it again in Atlanta. Then I saw the Barbra Streisand movie. I find it all incredibly corny/cheesy. It’s fine, it’s cute, but when I went to pay for the tickets, I just couldn’t hit the “PURCHASE” button. It was so wildly expensive on StubHub…

And for the same money, we could go have an incredible, earth-shattering meal somewhere. So I chose Daniel:

Why Daniel over New York’s other palaces of fine dining? Didn’t Pete Wells demote it a star, knocking it down from four to three?

Well: he did. But Daniel, more so than any other restaurant in New York, evokes the kind of classic New York French restaurant I love reading about in books, with the kind of old-world French style captured in movies like Ratatouille. The other choices all had knocks against them, in this department: Le Bernardin is lovely, but it’s focused mainly on seafood; The Grill at the Four Seasons is recently refurbished, but too trendy for my tastes; Jean-Georges is certainly excellent, but it’s known for its Asian-fusion. He’s into yuzu. I wanted French food without Yuzu.

And that’s precisely what we got. Again, a series of pictures:

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Our waiter, who you can see in the middle of that series of pictures, was so helpful: we didn’t want to do a bottle, but wanted to get a glass or two of wine to match the food. He poured us half glasses for the first two courses, and a full glass for the third course, which worked out perfectly.

And though I feel like I’ll lose my gay card for saying this, I’m glad we chose Daniel over Bette Midler (somewhere, an angry unicorn is blowing fire from its nose and charging out to find me). This meal WAS theater: entertaining, inspiring, fattening (OK, theater’s not fattening). I’m very glad we went.

Jesus, do I still have more meals to write about? I’m on an airplane, by the way. This post is getting me all the way back to L.A.

Next night: had dinner with our friend Chris at Bar Bolonat. My pictures are lousy, but you should see Chris because he’s handsome and our good friend:

That’s what he looks like ordering wine.

All of the food at Bar Bolonat was flavorful and perfect for a Friday night, catching up with an old friend.

(Do you feel like I cheated there? It’s just because the pictures were bad!)

Now: on to another highlight meal, the one that we had at the newly re-opened Union Square Cafe.

I like this place even better in its new location, and it wasn’t hard to get a reservation for lunch (again: use the apps. I play them like a video game!)

We were joined by the lovable creator of BETTER LATE THAN NEVER and THE GREAT AMERICAN WHATEVER and the Tweeter behind TIM FEDERLE: Tim Federle!

That’s him with our appetizers, a beautiful tomato salad (God, now that I’m blogging again, do I have to come up with more adjectives for food besides beautiful?) and a gorgeous polenta that tasted like adult baby food in the best possible way. Here are close-up pictures of both:

We all had the famous tuna burger, which lives up to the hype, and is a very good thing to eat for lunch (we had it with salad instead of chips because I’m really into showing restraint… haha):

Then for dessert, there was a battle of wills: Tim was Team Ricotta Mousse, I was Team Strawberry Pavlova. Actually, Tim very kindly said I should just get the Pavlova, but the waitress overhearing this brought us BOTH. That’s the kind of service Union Square Cafe (and Danny Meyer restaurants) are famous for.

OK, now even I’m getting exhausted from this post. So let me just tell you: Saturday night we met our friends Lucci and Josh at Cafe Altro Paradiso, another Ignacio Mattos restaurant. This one’s less weird than Estela, less ritzy than Flora Bar, more just straight-forward Italian food but made with so much artistry and wisdom and love. I really think this restaurant’s a gem; from the way it looks to the way everything tastes. It’s not a blow-you-away kind of restaurant; it’s more of just a restaurant that feels right, if that makes sense. Like a pair of elegant Italian slippers. Here are some pics:

Yesterday, our last day in New York, we met our friends Ola and Andres for brunch at Hearth, which is firing on all cylinders these days (last trip to New York, we ate there and had a tremendous dinner; Craig goes all the time and always wants to eat there every time I visit. I love Marco Canora and his food. Why am I still in parentheses?)

The two best things about eating brunch at Hearth: (1) You can make a reservation on OpenTable; (2) the pastry chef is the legendary Karen DeMasco, whose baking book is incredible, and who’s worked at some of the city’s best restaurants. Her corn muffin with blueberries was out of this world. And all the savory food was so, so, good; way better than brunch food has any right to be. My kale and sausage ragu was so deeply-flavored, it should be taught as a class at all culinary schools:

After brunch, Craig and I went to see the most heartbreaking but lovely play by Amy Herzog at The New York Theater Workshop, a play called MARY JANE, about the mother of a very sick child:

Needless to say, we needed a drink afterwards. I researched “wine bar” on my phone, and we wound up at Rebelle Wine Bar on the Bowery, which had the most incredible Sunday deal: HALF OFF all wines less than $400. Every wine on the menu.

So we got an $80 Jura Chardonnay for $40, which I’m still a bit in shock over:

We also got to sit outside and watch the people go by. Somebody came up to Craig and asked if he was The Amateur Gourmet! I immediately threw my Jura wine in the man’s face; just kidding, we had a nice conversation. He’s starting a podcast.

Finally–FINALLY–we had our last meal of the trip, at King in the West Village, which I read about in The New York Times and The New Yorker:

This was a very straightforward, delightful dinner that maybe didn’t dazzle, but it comforted in all the right ways:

Would you look at that: this post took so much time, we just landed in Australia.

In any case, I hope you enjoyed our meals in New York. I sure did. And seeing Craig! Because that’s what the trip was all about. Heart emoji.

The post A Week in New York with Meals at Pearl Oyster Bar, Mimi, Flora Bar, Daniel, Bar Bolonat, Union Square Cafe, Cafe Altro Paradiso, Hearth, and King appeared first on The Amateur Gourmet.

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Published on September 25, 2017 13:36

A Story For The Weekend

I’m sitting on a bench in the West Village, waiting for Craig to finish editing, and since I have some time to kill I’m going to tell you a story about something that happened to me a few weeks ago. I was at a party in West Hollywood on the top of a building and Craig, and several of our friends, had made their way up to the roof. I’d just poured myself a plastic cup of red wine and wasn’t sure what to do, so I put the plastic cup in my mouth, biting the lip, and started my way up the ladder. At some point, I wanted to see how much further I had to go, and–like a modern day CARRIE–I lifted my head up and completely doused myself with cheap Pinot Noir. I had to walk through a room of attractive strangers searching for paper towels while dripping purple/red fluid.

The moral of the story is: never leave home.

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Published on September 22, 2017 15:27

The Time I Made A Lime Leaf-Infused Lime Daiquiri But Couldn’t Open The Cocktail Shaker

I’m a big fan of Simply Ming on PBS (in fact, I’m just a big fan of cooking shows on PBS in general).

But Simply Ming seems to be one of the only platforms on TV where real, heavyweight chefs can come and showcase a dish (Daniel Boulud and Shaun Hergatt were recent guests). And he always starts the show with a cocktail, usually something simple and elegantly-made, which he offers to the guest before they get cooking. When pastry chef extraordinaire Johnny Iuzzini was on the show recently, Ming made him one of his favorite cocktails–a cocktail that Johnny said he always orders at a new bar to see if they make it right–a simple daiquiri with white rum, lime juice, and simple syrup.

Something about that combo really intrigued me (and also the fact that it’s a classic cocktail) so the next time I was at Barkeep in Silverlake, I picked up a bottle of white rum, the one you see at the top of this post. I had the limes, I had the sugar and water, I also had (foreboding music) the cocktail shaker.

Turns out, I also had kaffir lime leaves which I’d picked up at Cookbook in Echo Park which I keep mentioning in these posts, so you know it must be a pretty great store.

I decided to infuse those into the simple syrup for extra lime flavor. That was just a matter of mixing equal parts of sugar and water (a cup each) and dropping in the leaves; bringing it to a boil until the sugar dissolved and turning off the heat.

After letting it sit for twenty minutes, I strained the mixture into a jar…

Or, actually, just poured it into a jar and then placed it in the fridge.

A few hours later, I looked up Ming’s recipe which seemed delightfully simple: 2 ounces clear Rum, 1 ounce fresh lime juice, 3/4 ounce simple syrup, lime wheel for garnish, ice. Then: “Add all ingredients into a cocktail shaker filled with ice. Give a hard shake and double strain into a coupe glass.”

I did exactly that, everything except “double strain into a coupe glass” because as the title of this post suggests… I couldn’t get the cocktail shaker open!

I tried banging it, I tried hitting it, I tried tapping it, I tried yelling at it, I tried putting it between my feet and pulling upwards, I tried tying it to a toy train and pushing the speed up to max, I tried dropping it off a tall building, I tried lighting it on fire, I tried singing to it, dancing with it, telling it that it was the most beautiful cocktail shaker in all the world.

But it wouldn’t budge. So I did the next best thing: I made the drink again, but this time in a measuring cup with ice.

And then stirred actively for about a minute until I knew all the liquid was chilled (which is the point of shaking with ice, really. Just ask James Bond.)

Then I poured it into a coupe, just like the recipe said:

And it was a most excellent drink, I really wanted more of it. Next time I’ll probably double the portions of everything. And also, next time, I’ll use a different cocktail shaker? Or your advice in the comments, which you’ll inevitably give. I welcome it. Cheers!

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Published on September 20, 2017 08:44

Anatomy of a Dinner Party (A Timeline of Caesar Salad, Spaghetti and Meatballs, and Flourless Chocolate Cake All Cooked And Served in A Single Day)

My friend Ryan O’Connell is one of my favorite people. If you don’t know who he is, hop on to Amazon now and check out his book, I’m Special, and come back here once you’ve bought it and read it. Not only did he write that book, but now he’s writing for fall’s most anticipated TV show: the reboot of Will & Grace. So Ryan’s a talented guy who has great taste in wine and even better taste in dinner parties: he loves my cooking. For his birthday, I told him I’d make him a dinner and he could choose the menu. He thought on it and came back with “spaghetti and meatballs, because I know you’ll do it really, really well.” His boyfriend Jonathan loves my Caesar salad, so we added that to the menu. Later I e-mailed to query about his favorite desserts and he wrote back: “My fave desserts are chocolate cake, chocolate pudding, and strawberry shortcake.” I combined a little from Column A and a little from Column B and chose my favorite dinner party staple, this flourless chocolate cake.

Everyone (Ryan, Jonathan, and our mutual friends Lara, Graydon, and Kyle) were all set to come over on Saturday night at 7:30 PM. So on Saturday morning, I set out for Gelson’s to get started on my food shopping when I had an idea: what if I documented the whole thing, from the food shopping in the morning to the moment everyone leaves at the end of the night? Sort of a timeline of how I pull off a dinner party? Wouldn’t that be an epic, potentially useful post for people who want to pull off similar dinner parties? Well, either way, I did it, so without further ado, I present: a timeline of how I pulled off Ryan’s Birthday Dinner.

8:46 AM I wake up (was at another birthday in Pasadena the night before, too many of my friends have birthdays, so was feeling a little groggy) and finalize my shopping list, consulting the various recipes I plan to make that day. I do my shopping list in the notes app. Here it is in all its glory:

(I realize the timestamp doesn’t match the time I said I made the list, but I didn’t think to take a screenshot until later.)

(Also: the first three items aren’t dinner-party related: they were for my cat and my oatmeal respectively. Everything else, though, was for the dinner.)

(Also: I bought the orange but never used it. It was in case I decided to make Negronis, but we ended up having lots and lots of wine.)

9:36 AM Stumble out of my apartment, get in my car, and drive to Proof bakery for an iced coffee (cold brew, so extra battery-charging) and a financier, which is like the top of a muffin.

10:14 AM Arrive at Gelson’s and begin the shop. I start with produce, generally grabbing everything that I remember I need to grab without consulting the list… usually I get most of what I need off the top of my head, and then I check to see if I missed anything. Then I go aisle by aisle until I’m standing in the Jello aisle and taking a picture of my cart.

11 AM Back home, I carry three heavy bags of groceries in (I had to park around the block because Craig’s in New York and he left his car in our one parking spot), unpack them, and then put a tablespoon of butter in the springform pan to come to room temperature so I can butter the pan with it later.

11:25 AM Put a Joni Mitchell album on and hang out, reading a book (by which I mean, scrolling through Instagram stories) until it’s time to make the cake.

12 PM Make the cake! This is such an easy cake to make. (Again, here’s the recipe.) You basically just chop chocolate, put it in a bowl with butter, put the bowl on top of a pot of simmering water until everything melts, then stir in sugar, eggs, and, finally cocoa powder. I used the good stuff, some Valrhona I bought in Echo Park.

I also added a little ground coffee I had lying around because Ina Garten says that’s a good idea, and you should always trust Ina.

Oh, also: I added a teaspoon of salt (the recipe doesn’t call for it, but salt always makes dessert better) and a teaspoon of vanilla (same).

12:45 PM Cake goes into the oven.

12:46 PM While the cake’s baking, I make lunch for myself. I had some chickpeas and some fancy Soom Tahini I also bought at Cookbook in Echo Park, so I mashed those up together with lots of lemon juice, salt, and olive oil. I toasted rye bread, put the chickpea mash on top, and added a sliced cucumber with more lemon juice, olive oil, salt, and Aleppo pepper. A good light lunch for a big cooking day!

1 PM Read on the couch again, listening to more music (Craig bought this album I made fun of him for buying, Saint Etienne, because it seemed too cool for school, but it’s actually pretty great).

1:45 PM Cake comes out of the oven.

Here’s how I like to test if it’s done: I use a piece of spaghetti.

If it comes out clean, you’re good. This cake’s tricky because the center stays pretty wet while the outsides dry up much faster. So I take it out after about an hour when the spaghetti comes out 90% clean.

2 PM Clean up the cake and lunch mess. This is probably the most important thing I can teach you about hosting a dinner party: clean EVERYTHING as you go along, or you will have a disaster of epic proportions by the time the real cooking rolls around.

3:30 PM Shower. (Ended up doing a deep cleaning of my kitchen, but that’s not something you need to do at EVERY dinner party. It just needed to be done.)

4:30 PM Make the Caesar dressing. This is one of my most popular things I make, and my strategy is just to use a lot of garlic (about 5 cloves), a lot of anchovies (about 6 packed in oil), a lot of mustard (a tablespoon), an egg yolk…

Then lots of lemon juice (from two lemons) squeezed through a strainer straight into the blender:

Then a big pinch of salt, some pepper, the lid goes on, the blender goes on, and I slowly pour in about 3/4ths a cup of olive oil, until thick:

That’s a pretty killer dressing, though I made a mistake this time around: usually I grind a bunch of Parmesan in the blender before making the dressing so the remnant Parm helps it thicken sooner (this took a lot more oil). Plus, grinding Parmesan in the blender is one of my favorite things to do when hosting a dinner party (another Ina trick) because you end up using a lot more when it’s that easy to prepare and it makes everything taste so good.

So I cleaned the blender, after making the dressing, and then cut three wedges of really good Parmesan (it makes a big difference, God I’m so Ina-influenced) into cubes and, in little groups, popped them into the blender to be pulverized.

[Note: see the picture above? When buying Parmesan, make sure to buy the wedges that only have the rind at the top. Sometimes you’ll get screwed if the rind goes around in an L-shape, you get less usable Parmesan that way. I hope that made sense.]

5:06 PM Start sauce. So the meatball recipe I used (a pretty irrefutable one from Serious Eats) said you can make any kind of tomato sauce. So I got out my stockpot and made a sauce with lots of olive oil, lots of chopped onion, lots of garlic, tomato paste, and chile flakes that I cooked a bit together to infuse the oil and to get a little toasty:

Then I added three cans of San Marzano tomatoes (crushed by hand) and a big pinch of salt:

Brought that to a boil and then, once again, CLEANED THE KITCHEN. I’m telling you, it’s the most important thing.

Also, at this point, I refrigerated the plates for the salad. A nice, easy touch that makes a subtle but noticeable difference.

5:44 PM Roast cherry tomatoes for the Caesar salad. This is an easy trick (OK, another Ina trick) where you roast cherry tomatoes on a cookie sheet in a hot oven with olive oil, salt, and pepper until they burst and get a little charred:

5:47 PM While those were roasting, I set the table. This is probably my favorite pre-dinner party moment, when the excitement starts to kick in… ooh, people are coming over soon and I haven’t even started making the meatballs yet!

6 PM Start making the meatballs. This recipe is pretty epic (again, here’s the link); I skipped the whole thing where you gelatinize chicken stock and chop that for your meatballs. But I did buy good bread, cut the crusts off, cut the insides into cubes, soak the cubes in whole milk, etc, etc.

I actually had too much bread so when the tomatoes came out of the oven, I decided to use the extra cubes to make croutons. It was this easy: tossed the cubes with olive oil, salt, and pepper and popped into the 400 degree oven until they were golden all over.

6:28 PM At this point, the sauce was done, and I set two ladlefuls of it aside for our vegetarian friend Jonathan who wouldn’t want sauce that co-habitated with balls of meat. Doesn’t the sauce look good?

OK, now the meatball-making began in earnest, with only an hour to go before guests arrived. I cut it a little close.

The recipe’s really cool in that you use a stand mixer to whip together the milk-soaked bread, onion, garlic, oregano, parsley, ground fennel seed, egg yolks, and minced pancetta.

To that mixture, you add 1/3rd of your meat (I used a mixture of pork and ground beef from McCall’s) so that it really gets worked in, then you add the rest with your hands to keep the meatballs light.

7 PM Make a test meatball. This was a trick Sara Moulton taught me when I wrote my cookbook and I never forgot it: when making a meat mixture that you can’t taste raw, fry up a little bit so you can taste for seasoning. So that’s exactly what I did in a little pan with some olive oil:

Man, did that taste good. Like perfect. So we were ready to roll.

7:07 PM Roll the meatballs! I really cut this close. But this was fast work:

Under the broiler they went (that’s the other ingenious part of the recipe, so they don’t fall apart in a frying pan):

7:16 PM Light candles, fill water glasses. We’re down to the wire…

7:21 PM Meatballs out of the broiler and into the sauce.

They only need ten minutes to cook at a simmer, so I lowered the heat to like the ULTIMATE low and kept them in there for the first hour of the party and it was totally fine.

And, wouldn’t you know it, it’s…

7:30 PM and the guests are here with LOTS and LOTS of wine.

If there’s one thing that Craig taught me about hosting diner parties (since we’ve been doing them together for over eleven years) is that the cocktail portion shouldn’t be rushed. So I put out olives and Marcona almonds and made sure everyone had some time to sit, snack, and chat before moving to the table.

[That picture wasn’t posed at all!]

8:18 PM Time to make/eat the salad. In a giant bowl I tore up lots of romaine lettuce and added the croutons. Then I drizzled in LOTS of that dressing (more is better than less when it comes to Caesar as far as I’m concerned), lots of the grated Parmesan, and then Jonathan volunteered to place the cherry tomatoes.

Here they are on those oh-so-chilled plates:

Look at these happy diners:

8:34 PM While everyone was enjoying their salad, I snuck into the kitchen to bring a big pot of water to a boil and to taste a meatball to make sure it didn’t get too dried out.

Oh, not at all, these meatballs are amazing. It’s such a smart recipe.

8:55 PM Cleared the salad plates and when the water was boiling, I salted it aggressively, and then dropped in two pounds of spaghetti.

Meanwhile, I scooped all the meatballs out of the sauce into a baking dish.

So Jonathan wouldn’t be jealous of all of us meat-eaters, I added a pat of butter to his just-plain sauce which made a big diff. Oh: everything was simmering at this point and I added a ladleful of pasta water to both the not-meat sauce and the meat-sauce to help the spaghetti stick.

Then, when the spaghetti was just al dente, I added it to the sauces to finish cooking on high heat.

(That I learned from watching Mario Batali, not Ina Garten, so take that Ina!)

Once the sauce and spaghetti were married, I used tongs to twirl it all on to white plates, topped with the meatballs, lots of that Parmesan we so carefully blended earlier, and lots of chopped parsley. (You can see the finished plate at the top of this post.)

Look at the happy birthday boy:

Everyone seemed to really dig their spaghetti and meatballs, made with love:

10:11 PM Finally it was time to serve the birthday cake. If you read my shopping list carefully above, you saw I bought birthday candles. And so I did! Pink ones:

(Oh, I dusted the cake with powdered sugar first.)

Happy birthday, Ryan!

I also bought McConnell’s vanilla ice cream and Jonathan was put in charge of scooping. Let’s just say he’s better at placing tomatoes (just kidding Jonathan, love you!)

10:33 PM This is when the after dinner drinks came out. Craig and I have built up quite a collection of Amaros and Fernets:

Around this time, Lara really wanted to pet Mr. Lolita, who’s now eighteen and senile and really, really mean to anyone who’s not me. I said it maybe wasn’t a good idea so we worked out a system where Mr. Lolita sat on my lap and I pretended to be petting him while Lara was really petting him. This plan immediately backfired when Mr. Lolita leapt in the air, hissed, bit Lara, scratched me, and did a backflip on to the ground. It was very entertaining but also quite alarming.

11:48 PM And after all that, this was when the Ubers arrived and everyone said goodnight.

I could end the post here, but I think it’s important, if you’re going to host a dinner party like this, to know what to expect at the end. #1: you’re going to feel high as a kite because you just fed a bunch of people really good food and had a grand old time, cat scratch notwithstanding, and this is what life’s all about! #2: dishes.

(Imagine if you hadn’t cleaned up the cake mess and the tomato sauce mess earlier…)

You know what? Don’t worry about it. Leave them and get to them tomorrow morning.

8:57 AM (Next morning). Do the dishes while listening to Kate Bush’s The Kick Inside (it’s really good Sunday morning dish music). You know, on Alec Baldwin’s podcast he was once interviewing Sandra Bernhard and they were both talking about how much they love to do dishes, how satisfying it is. And you know what? I agree. Because when you’re done, your kitchen is sparkling and ready for the whole thing to happen again:

Call me cheesy, but I think that’s a pretty beautiful thing.

The post Anatomy of a Dinner Party (A Timeline of Caesar Salad, Spaghetti and Meatballs, and Flourless Chocolate Cake All Cooked And Served in A Single Day) appeared first on The Amateur Gourmet.

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Published on September 18, 2017 08:00

Pappa al Pomodoro (Or: How To Eat Tomato Sauce and Bread For Dinner)

I’ve been really into tomatoes this summer. Every Sunday I’ve been going to the Atwater Village Farmer’s Market, buying some juicy heirlooms, and using them in sandwiches, salads, tomato baths, you get the idea. You might think that now that August is over, tomato season is on the way out… but you’d be wrong! Most chefs agree that the best tomatoes come in September and October. We’re entering PEAK tomato season.

So why am I sharing a recipe for a soup made with canned tomatoes? Answer: sometimes, even in peak tomato season, you feel a little fresh tomato fatigue. Just the words “farmer’s market” and “heirloom tomato” sound annoying on a Sunday morning when you’re hungover, laying on the couch, and happy to be watching PBS cooking shows while pretending to read The New York Times. When dinner rolls around, you don’t have anything except a few cans of tomatoes, an onion, garlic, and that leftover bread from a few days ago. That’s when PAPPA AL POMODORO comes to the rescue.

Here’s how easy this soup is (and it’s based on this recipe from Mario Batali). Step one: chop an onion and saute it in olive oil with a little salt.

Add a few cloves of sliced garlic and when they’re fragrant, add a can of tomatoes that you’ve crushed with your hands (careful: they squirt. Use a big bowl.)

Add another pinch of salt and cook that down like you’re making tomato sauce because, essentially, you are. Oh: hold on to the can, though. You’ll use that in about 20 minutes.

While that’s cooking down, take a half of a loaf of bread or so (or however much bread you want to put in your soup) and cube it. I’d just bought a beautiful sourdough loaf from Cookbook in Echo Park, which totally reveals the first two paragraphs to be total lies: NO, I wasn’t lying on my couch on Sunday hungover watching cooking shows. I was driving around, Sunday, hungover and shopping at a fancy food boutique for artisanal bread. Look how pretty:

So you cut that bread into cubes. You could cut off the crusts, but to me the crusts of that kind of bread are the best part, so I left them on.

When your sauce is nice and thick, take that can that you still have and fill it with water. About a cup. And add it to the sauce (the reason you use the can is to get any remnant tomato flavor that’s still lingering behind). Add another pinch of salt and then add all of your bread cubes:

Turn up the heat a bit and cook the sauce with the bread and add some fresh basil while you’re at it:

Pretty soon you’ll have a thick, wonderful amalgamation of tomato sauce and bread and basil. I mean look at this:

And that’s basically it!

Ladle that into a bowl and dress it up with a drizzle of good olive oil, a sprinkling of red chile flakes, a grating (or lots of gratings, rather) of Parmesan cheese, and some sliced basil.

It’s a summery soup that feels wintery; or a wintery soup that feels summery. Pair it with a bold Italian red (I chose one from Mount Etna, because I like my wines how I like my women: VOLCANIC. Wait, what? I’m gay.)

And there you are… a tomato soup for lazy people who aren’t really that lazy and who love bread.

The post Pappa al Pomodoro (Or: How To Eat Tomato Sauce and Bread For Dinner) appeared first on The Amateur Gourmet.

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Published on September 14, 2017 22:48

Pappa alla Pomodoro (Or: How To Eat Tomato Sauce and Bread For Dinner)

I’ve been really into tomatoes this summer. Every Sunday I’ve been going to the Atwater Village Farmer’s Market, buying some juicy heirlooms, and using them in sandwiches, salads, tomato baths, you get the idea. You might think that now that August is over, tomato season is on the way out… but you’d be wrong! Most chefs agree that the best tomatoes come in September and October. We’re entering PEAK tomato season.

So why am I sharing a recipe for a soup made with canned tomatoes? Answer: sometimes, even in peak tomato season, you feel a little fresh tomato fatigue. Just the words “farmer’s market” and “heirloom tomato” sound annoying on a Sunday morning when you’re hungover, laying on the couch, and happy to be watching PBS cooking shows while pretending to read The New York Times. When dinner rolls around, you don’t have anything except a few cans of tomatoes, an onion, garlic, and that leftover bread from a few days ago. That’s when PAPPA ALLA POMODORO comes to the rescue.