Adam D. Roberts's Blog, page 5

Homemade Yellow Cake with Chocolate Frosting

Who doesn’t love a yellow cake with chocolate frosting? For most of us, it evokes a sense of childhood and birthday parties and coming home from school and eating a slice with a cold glass of milk (okay, in my family it was more like a slice of Entenmann’s and a glass of Crystal Light Lemonade, but stick with me here). In this week’s episode of The Amateur Gourmet Show, I show you how to make this beloved cake from scratch. And even if there are a few hiccups along the way, the end cake is well worth it. Be sure to like and subscribe while you’re there!

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My Favorite Healthy Soup

I’ve really become obsessed with ribollita lately. It’s such a simple soup to make: carrots, onions, celery (check!), cabbage and kale (check!), then a bunch of flavoring agents (garlic, Parmesan rind, bay leaves, chili flakes). Watch the video above to see how easy it is and if you enjoy it, please like and subscribe. You’ll find the recipe under the description. Bon appetit!

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Caesar Caesar

The secret’s out! Well, the secret to my world famous Caesar salad. Check out the premiere episode of The Amateur Gourmet Show on YouTube and be sure to like and subscribe so you don’t miss next week’s episode. If you’d like the full recipe, here it is on Substack. Enjoy!

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It’s All Happening on Substack

Hi everyone, did you know I’ve been writing TWO Amateur Gourmet newsletters a week, filled with recipes, restaurant reviews, and links? The Monday one is totally free and if you find yourself loving it, you can get the Thursday one for just a small fee. Enter your e-mail address above and join the fun! Or click here to see what it’s all about before you sign-up. Either way, I’ll see you over on Substack.

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We Sold a Cookbook!

If you know anything about me you know that I love two things more than anything else: (1) cooking and (2) Broadway musicals. A few years ago, I was lucky enough to become friends with one of my favorite Broadway actors, Gideon Glick (we met up at The Russian Tea Room), and over the pandemic we jokingly sent each other funny Broadway-themed dishes for a potential Broadway cookbook: Sunday in the Pork with George. Bundts on this Island. The Sound of Moussaka. At some point, I pitched this idea to my brilliant cookbook agent Alison Fargis at Stonesong and she loved it. Then we hit the jackpot and convinced renowned Broadway illustrator Justin “Squigs” Robertson to illustrate the book for us and guess what? We just sold the book to an incredible publisher: Countryman Press! So look out for GIVE MY SWISS CHARDS TO BROADWAY, coming Fall 2022.

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Lunch Therapy is Back

Hey fans of Lunch Therapy! The podcast that you know and love is back.

When the pandemic started, I figured I couldn’t do the podcast anymore because I was interviewing everyone face-to-face. But a year later, I realized that I was an idiot: not only is Zoom a totally valid way to do these interviews, it’s an even better way because (a) I can interview anyone in the world!: and (b) I can record the video as well as the audio, so there’s two ways to experience Lunch Therapy.

So, if you’re someone who loves to listen to podcasts on your headphones or in the kitchen or in your car, listen to the new episodes of Lunch Therapy on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you’re more of a visual person, watch my recent Lunch Therapy sessions on my new YouTube Channel. (Be sure to subscribe.) Recent guests include the founder of Serious Eats, Ed Levine (see above); San Francisco Chronicle food critic Soleil Ho (no video there, for anonymity reasons); artist-in-residence at Joe’s Pub and author of Intimacy Idiot, Isaac Oliver; and comedian/TV/film star (Search Party, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood) Kate Berlant. Be sure to leave some comments/reviews if you get a chance… it’ll help things along. Enjoy and don’t forget to eat lunch!

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The Ultimate Strawberry-Rhubarb Pie

I’m a terrible dancer, though I enjoy dancing. In college, I was in a production of A Funny Thing Happened to the Way to the Forum (I played Hysterium; such typecasting) and learned the box step. That’s the extent of my dancing prowess. Give me a bouncy Sondheim score and a solid square of dance floor, and I’m there.

Pie-making is a bit like dancing for me. I’m enthusiastic, but often limited in my capabilities. There was that patched-together rhubarb pie from 2010; and that blueberry disaster from 2007. Things have gotten much better since then: the last pie I posted about, Nicole Rucker’s Nectarine Plum Pie with a Brown Sugar Crust, was a bonafide hit. And then there was this strawberry-rhubarb pie that I made for the Oscars. No longer was I a goofy Hysterium bouncing around a college theater; for one brief moment in time, I was Anna Pavlova… except instead of a dying swan, I was a soaring bird!

I bring up dance because that’s what it felt like when I made this pie. I waltzed my way over to the food processor and poured in the flour, the sugar, the salt, the cold butter, and pulsed, adding just enough cold water for it to hold together. Then I shaped it into these discs (I work the dough a bit more than I did in the past; just a few smushes and schmears so it holds together).

Meanwhile, check out these strawberries from our weekly trip to the Atwater Village Farmer’s Market.

Honestly, I could’ve put those on a cookie and it would’ve made a delectable pie. As it was, I bought a whole carton and then got rhubarb at the grocery store and used Bon Appetit’s pie filling as a guide.

Then, once again, I put on my tutu and did the pie dance: rolling out the dough, shaping it over the pie dish (I put it on a foil-lined tray, which proved to be smart… there was a lot of leakage), pouring in the filling, laying on the top, and crimping it.

The most surprising thing about this pie recipe is how long it bakes for: almost an hour and thirty minutes. The Bon Appetit people push you towards a golden crust so that’s what I did, and I’m not sorry. (It helped that I brushed it with egg and sprinkled with Turbinado sugar, aka: Sugar in the Raw.)

I don’t know how to embed video into a blog post, but if you look on Instagram, you can see that pie burbling away. I was dancing and this pie was singing. The hardest part was letting it cool for four hours. Good thing we had the Oscars to watch, so by the time the big awards came up, it was time to cut in.

I don’t know how you felt about the Best Picture winner or Best Cinematography, but I can tell you what took the award for best pie: this strawberry-rhubarb beauty. Now you can throw roses at me as I curtsy and bow!

PrintThe Ultimate Strawberry-Rhubarb PieA mixture of my favorite pie crust with a not-too-sweet and very tart filling.IngredientsFor the pie dough:2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour1 tablespoon sugar1 teaspoon salt2 sticks very cold butter, cut into cubes1/2 – 3/4 cups ice waterFor the filling:1 1/4 pounds rhubarb, cut into 1/2-inch pieces1 pound strawberries, hulled and quartered1/2 cup granulated sugar1/3 cup light brown sugar5 tablespoons corn starch1 teaspoon freshly grated lemon zest1 teaspoon vanilla extract or vanilla bean pastePinch kosher salt1 large egg, beaten1 tablespoon Turbinado sugarInstructionsTo make the pie dough: place the dry ingredients in the bowl of a food processor and pulse a few times. Add the cold, cubed butter, toss with your fingers in the flour, then, with the lid on, pulse a few more times until the butter pieces are the size of large peas. Now, add some of the cold water, pulse twice; check the texture. It should look like wet sand and hold together easily when you pinch a clump. If not, keeping adding the ice water and pulsing until it does. (Better to err on the side of a little wetter than too dry, IMO.)Pour the mixture on to a well floured board. I like to work the dough a tiny bit here: press down with the heel of your hand, fold over with a bench scraper, and do it a few more times — being sure not to warm up the butter — until the dough holds together neatly. Cut in half and shape each half into a disc. Wrap in plastic and refrigerate for an hour.Heat the oven to 425 and make your filling. In a large bowl, combine the rhubarb, strawberries, sugar, brown sugar, corn starch, lemon zest, vanilla, and salt.To assemble your pie, place a 9-inch pie dish on a cookie sheet lined with foil (this will help with leakage). Place one disc of dough on a well-floured board and smack with a well-floured rolling pin, rotating as you do. Begin rolling out from the middle, rotating counter-clockwise a tiny bit each time and sprinkling with more flour if it gets at all sticky. When you've rolled it out to a big circle, bigger than your pie dish (10 inches or more), drape over the pie dish and roll out the other disc of pie dough. Add your filling to the pie in the dish and drape the other dough on top.Pinch the two overhangs of dough together and then use a scissor to cut around, leaving about an inch of overhang. Pinch together again, then fold over towards the pie dish. Crimp using your thumb and pointer finger from both hands (I bet there's a YouTube video you can watch about that). Beat the egg in a small bowl, brush on to the pie, and sprinkle with the sugar. Cut three slits at the top outward from the middle.Place the pie on the cookie sheet in the oven and bake for 5 minutes. Then reduce the temperature to 375 and continue cooking until deep golden brown and the juices are thick and bubbling, about 75 – 90 minutes longer.Remove from the oven and allow to cool for at least four hours so the pie sets up. Serve by itself or with vanilla ice cream.

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Gregory Gourdet’s Cashew “Hummus” with Harissa

Back in my blogging bigshot days, publishers would send me free cookbooks. For me, that was better than having Ed McMahon show up at my door with a giant check. I love cookbooks. I have stacks and stacks of them in my kitchen right now because there’s not enough room left on my shelves. (“Maybe you should pull out the ones you don’t use and sell them?” says my well-meaning but delusional husband. “I USE ALL OF THEM!” I reply.)

So imagine my delight the other day when an advanced copy of Gregory Gourdet’s new cookbook, Everyone’s Table, showed up at my door. I’ve been a fan of Gregory’s since he first appeared on Top Chef, and I was really rooting for him when he came back for the All Stars season. Now he’s a judge — a much more comfortable role, I imagine — and it’s great to hear him thoughtfully and gently weigh in on everyone’s dishes.

The recipes in Gregory’s book are so perfect for this moment we’re in, slowly tiptoeing out of quarantine, ready to stop pounding down the Oreos and eager to eat something a bit more wholesome but not, like, boring. Enter Gregory’s book, which he wrote after getting sober. These recipes, to quote the jacket copy, are “both full of nutrients and full of flavor.”

I’ll be honest… I haven’t spent much time with the book yet because when I flipped it open, the first recipe that I landed on was the one that I instantly wanted to make: Cashew “Hummus” with Chile and Herbs.

The idea seemed so fascinating to me: you boil raw cashews in water for 30 minutes. Then you treat them like chickpeas and make hummus with them. (It’s pretty straightforward.)

If you know anything about cashews and cashew products — like cashew butter, for example — they’re often super rich and surprisingly sweet. Boiling them and blending them, as you do here, into a hummus with tahini and garlic and lemon juice and salt is completely MIND-BLOWING.

I kid you not! I served this last night to some vaccinated friends before dinner and this BECAME dinner. They ate up the whole bowl with Persian cucumber spears and Pita chips and couldn’t get enough. (Craig said he liked it way better than actual hummus.) Unlike chickpeas, which can be a little blah, the cashews pull their weight: think of a smooth peanut butter-like texture that’s packed with garlicky, lemony, salty flavors.

The recipe below is slightly tweaked from the one in Gregory’s book. He has you blend the boiled cashews separately from the lemon juice, garlic, cumin and salt, and then you stir it all together manually with the tahini. I just thought it was easier to blend them all together, using the cooking liquid to thin it out a little. (I’m sure there’s a reason he did it his way; maybe for the texture?).

As for serving, I mixed some harissa paste with olive oil and drizzled it all over the top and sprinkled on some smoked paprika. I was so eager to serve it, I forgot to sprinkle on parsley and scallions. And the guests didn’t seem to mind.

So the next time you’re thinking about making hummus, break out the cashews. Chickpeas, please pack your knives and go.

PrintCashew “Hummus” with HarissaA surprising new take on hummus from Gregory Gourdet's Everyone's Table.Servings 8IngredientsFor the "Hummus":2 cups raw cashews1/2 teaspoon baking soda1 tablespoon kosher salt3/4 cup fresh lemon juice (from 5 to 6 juicy lemons)8 medium garlic cloves, peeled1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds, ground to a powder2 cups well-stirred tahiniFor Serving:6 tablespoons harissa, homemade or store-boughtSmoked paprika1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oilHandful small parsley sprigs3 scallions, trimmed and thinly slicedInstructionsIn a medium pot, combine the cashews, baking soda, and 3 cups of water and bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce the heat and simmer, stirring occasionally and skimming off any foam, until the cashews are fully tender and creamy inside, like cooked beans, about 30 minutes.Use a slotted spoon to scoop out 1/3 cup of the cashews and transfer them to a small bowl to cool. Continue to cook the remaining cashews until they're very soft and start falling apart and most of the liquid has been absorbed, 5 to 10 minutes more. You should be able to smoosh a cashew easily against the side of the pot with almost no pressure. Drain the cashews, reserving 1 cup of the cooking liquid.Place the cashews, salt, lemon juice, garlic, cumin, and tahini into a food processor and blend into a paste. Slowly add the reserved cooking liquid through the feed tube to achieve a creamier consistency. Taste and adjust for salt and lemon.To serve: scoop the hummus into a serving bowl and create a big well in the center. To the well, add the harissa, whole cooked cashews, and smoked paprika. Drizzle on the olive oil, sprinkle on the parsley and scallions, and serve.NotesThe recipe calls for 8 medium garlic cloves and 3/4 cup fresh lemon juice, which makes for a really assertive hummus. If you want to dial it down a bit, start with 4 garlic cloves and half the lemon juice and then adjust once blended to your personal taste.

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Salad on the Same Plate as Dinner, Revisited

Back in 2013, when I was still something of an innocent, I wrote a post called “Salad on the Same Plate as Dinner” in which I argued that hot food and cold food never belong together on the same plate. I was specifically reacting to a dinner that I had at Parm on the Lower East Side in which a chicken Parmesan was presented on the same plate as an Italian chopped salad. “[The] red sauce did not make the salad taste better. It was something hot and mushy underneath something cold and crunchy. Inversely, the salad didn’t do much for the Chicken Parmesan. The heat from the chicken wilted a few stray lettuce leaves which lay there sadly on my fork as I cut my way through the cheese and the breading. All in all, this dinner would’ve been better if the chicken had been served on a hot plate and the salad on a cold plate.”

Now I read that and think: “Wow, are you wrong!” Salad on the same plate as dinner is an excellent idea for many different reasons. 1. It provides a textural contrast; 2. It’s offers up some necessary roughage (great movie, by the way); 3. The acidity from the salad can often cut against the richness of your entree (especially if your entree is bucatini Cacio e Pepe, like in the picture above); and 4. It creates less dishes.

How did this change of heart come about?

I think it started as an issue of pacing. Normally, at a dinner party, I’d do a salad course and then an entree course. For example, when making my famous cavatappi with sun-dried tomatoes, I’d often make a Caesar salad and serve that up first.

But then I got to thinking: wouldn’t all of that pasta on a plate be kind of repetitive? The same combination of noodle, bean, and sun-dried tomato in every bite? And aren’t some of the flavors in my Caesar salad the same flavors in the pasta? The garlic? The Parmesan? The olive oil?

And so, instead of drawing out a dinner into a multipart affair, I just put everything on the table: the big pot of pasta, the salad in a salad bowl, and let everyone pile whatever they wanted on to their plates.

Concerns about temperature are moot when the pasta’s on one side of the plate and the salad’s on the other side. Suddenly, there’s variety: there’s crunch, there’s lemon, there’s tomato, there’s anchovy. Salad on the same plate as dinner isn’t a compromise, it’s an ideal. Now I wouldn’t think of serving pasta any other way.

So, in conclusion, people change. Some of us get grouchier as we get older, some of us grow more open-minded. And though my husband thinks I’m pretty grouchy on a variety of subjects (blasting Van Halen at nine in the morning, shoving the laundry into a pile instead of folding it right away), when it comes to salad on the same plate as dinner, I’m now truly enlightened.

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Join Me On Substack!

Hi, in case you’re wondering where I’ve been… I’ve been on Substack! Ever since I discovered how easy it is to shoot out a weekly dispatch on there, I’ve been putting all of my energy into my Monday newsletters: the last one had the quick salmon dinner you see above, my favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe, a link to a video of me making seared scallops and citrus risotto, and tons of links to the best food content on the web.

Paid subscribers get the newsletter every week and right now I’m offering a 20% discount for loyal Amateur Gourmet readers: CLICK HERE to redeem it and you’ll get this next Monday’s newsletter, which’ll have my apple pie secrets, plus all kinds of great links, stories, and pictures of Winston the dog. Offer ends on 2/10. See you over there!

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