Deb Perelman's Blog, page 15
October 7, 2020
simple cauliflower tacos
Last week I told you about our favorite quarantine cookies. This is our quarantine taco, another simple discovery from our early Inside Days this spring that ticked a miraculous number of boxes at once. Like, “How do we turn this massive head of cauliflower into dinner because it’s too big for our overstuffed fridge?” and “without having to go to the store and buy anything extra?” It used so many ingredients that had become staples — canned beans, cotija (great fridge shelf life), red onions, tortillas, and a small luxury of an avocado delivery service we discovered right when we needed it most. Plus, it managed to work for the whole family, including our pickiest, who we discovered liked roasted cauliflower and also pickled onions, we suspect because they’re pink.
September 30, 2020
whole wheat chocolate oat cookies
Because I am happiest when I let cakes be cakes, and cookies be cookies in all of their real-butter-and-refined sugar bliss, I rarely swap whole wheat or other ingredients in desserts in an effort to put a health halo on them, with two exceptions. The first is morning baked goods, usually muffins like these I’d make for the kids on a weekday, which just feel more breakfast when they least resemble, say, a birthday cake, not that there aren’t days that require that, too. The second is when I think the baked good is improved by the ingredient swap — more crisp/craggy, dynamic or flavorful. I just never expected it to happen to what we call our House Cookie — a one-bowl oatmeal cookie I’ve probably made many times a year for well over a decade, always putting extra scoops in the freezer, so we can have freshly baked cookies when life demands them.
September 21, 2020
homemade cream cheese
A few years ago, I figured out how to make cream cheese and didn’t quite know what to do with this information. What kind of crazy person makes their own cream cheese, no matter how delicious it is? Then again, you could use that reasoning to reject almost anything here (looking in particular at you, marshmallows) and you’re still here. But I suspected this would be a bridge too far. Even food blogging grandmothers have to stay relevant and who has looked around [gestures to all of these things in this world right now] and said “What really keeps me up at night is the stabilizers in store-bought cream cheese”?
September 14, 2020
tangy braised chickpeas
One of my most core cooking beliefs, cemented over 15 vegetarian years (that ended shortly before this site began) is that most, or at minimum, half of what we think we like about eating meat has absolutely nothing to do with meat, but the way it’s prepared, from the salt-pepper char on a steak to the layers of flavors in a long braise. It’s this logic that led me to mushroom bourguignon and pate and even pizza beans, where the beans take the place of meat and pasta in a ziti-like dish. And it’s what led me to drop my jaw at the brilliance of Molly Yeh’s 2018 “brisket-braised chickpeas” , a brisket-free, vegan dish that uses the flavors you’d put in your favorite brisket braise but with chickpeas and vegetables. My sister had recently gone vegan, and the timing was perfect for our new year meal.
August 31, 2020
corn coconut soup
I didn’t say it was logical, I think we know better than to expect clear, sound reasoning here, but when cookbooks decided that cauliflower could be pizza crusts or that black beans could go in brownies, I’m sorry, but I checked out. But this summer in particular, as plant-based diets are on evermore agendas, I’ve seen so many creative uses of corn — as ribs, twice, corn butter, and now, a surged interest in a longtime restaurant kitchen staple, corn stocks — and I love it; I’m all in.
A few weeks ago, People Magazine ran my blueberry muffin recipe and on my way to find it, I ran into this winning corn-coconut soup from beloved Top Chef Season 17 winner, Melissa King, and had to make it right away. It absolutely delivered. Because you first make a corn stock from corn cobs, ginger, onion, and water, the soup is completely vegan and more deeply corn-flavored than it would be from a mixed vegetable stock. From there, you sauté the kernels, more onion, and garlic, simmer it with the stock and coconut milk, blend it, and finish it with lime juice. The resulting soup is mellow and delicious — the pickiest human in my family not only ate it, she vocally reconsidered her previously-held stance on not liking my cooking, and requested it for lunch the next day. (I am still recovering.)
August 21, 2020
shaved fennel and crushed olive salad
Last week I childishly pouted that nobody really loves fennel salads and so many of you commented that you wanted one, I am delighted I’ve been given the external validation I require to share a new one here. This fennel salad is from Café Altro Paradiso, which shares a chef — Ignacio Mattos — with two other New York restaurants, estela and Flora Bar. What I love about the cooking at these restaurants is that there’s a quiet minimalism to each dish that belies the actual complexity of flavors. It’s particularly evident in salads. At estela, my favorite is this endive salad, which seems like the most plain pile of lettuce until you find the heap of loudly flavored texture and crunch below, for scooping onto the leaves. This fennel salad looks equally unassuming when it comes out: a mountain of shaved bulb. But it sits on a piquant medley of crushed olives, thinly sliced stems, minced fronds, sharp cheese, citrus zest, juice, wine vinegar, olive oil, and seasoning that I’m not sure I ever want to stop eating.
Fennel is divisive. Olives are divisive. I know this salad isn’t for everyone — I mean, what is, truly, except puppies, kittens, and thriving postal service — and if you’re about to tell me that you’d like this except for the fennel and/or the olives, shh, you don’t need to because I already know. I’ll have something you like more next week. Everyone gets a turn. I’ve gone full Mom Voice, haven’t I?
August 15, 2020
mathilde’s tomato tart
I read a new novel, The Margot Affair, last month and loved it. It’s not about about food, but every time a meal comes up, I was riveted by how good it sounded.
“The salt-cured cod was layered with cream mashed potatoes and presented in a small cocotte… the mussels bathed in white wine and garlic sauce.”
“Caramelized slices of pear hid beneath the custard, and the top was sprinkled with shards of toasted almonds.”
“She made it with whole milk and a dash of cream and pieces of dark chocolate. I dipped a piece of buttered toast into the chocolate.”
August 7, 2020
kachumber cooler
If you go way back in the land of Smitten Kitchen, you might know that one of my favorite restaurants of all time was called Tabla, specifically the more casual, heavier on the small plates, downstairs space called the Bread Bar. In my early years in New York, I went there as often as I could scrape the change together. I’m pretty sure we ate there for my 25th birthday. Alex met my parents there for the first time. We even put the (now discontinued) wine glasses on our wedding registry. I obsessed over every dish and can reel off the names of several just from memory — saag paneer pizza, potato apple chaat, black pepper shrimp, boondi raita, aloo kulcha, and the mango kulfi pops. The cocktails were also exceptional; Alex loved the Masala Mary, and I loved the Tamarind Margarita and the Kachumber Cooler; we drank them standing up, because it was always crowded, and snacked on my desert island favorite, the bar popcorn with ghee and chat masala, although we’d also never say no to the chickpea-battered onion rings with a spicy masala ketchup.
After Tabla closed in 2009, we went out to eat everywhere the chef, Floyd Cardoz, cooked next — North End Grill, Paowalla, later called Bombay Bread Bar, where he rekindled the menu with many Tabla favorites, much to our delight. It closed a little under a year ago, and I was impatiently waiting to hear what he’d be up to next when a friend texted early one morning in March that he had died of complications relating to Covid-19. He was only 59.
July 30, 2020
dulce de leche chocoflan
If you spend any time on Pinterest or Instagram food searches, and who that hangs out here does not, I bet at least once in the last couple years, your Explore tab led you to the photogenic, decadent world of chocoflans. If not, let this post fix your suggestions right now. Chocoflans, sometimes called impossible flan (pastel imposible), are one part flan (a sweetened egg custard with caramel or dulce de leche) and one part plush chocolate cake. They’re considered a bit magical, not only because they combine two of the most wonderful desserts in the world, but because of what happens in the oven. Even though it goes into the oven with the cake batter in first and the flan in second, as it bakes, the batters flip. Once you invert it out of the baking pan, you end up with the flan on top and the cake underneath. I’ve read that this is because the cake, as it rises in the oven, becomes lighter than the flan layer, so the flan sinks and I, a non-scientist, based on little more than liking the sound of it, have concluded that it makes total sense.
July 23, 2020
pasta with pesto genovese
Welcome to the point of the summer when I don’t remember why I chose a career in cooking when I only want to eat about five things — tomatoes, melon, iced coffee and/or drinks, and popsicles — until the heat and humidity recede. The fifth, pasta with homemade basil pesto, is a craving that arrives like clockwork every July. It usually comes with very specific instructions, a list of everything I think tastes good with, near, or stirred into pesto pasta, things like white beans, grilled and marinated zucchini, halved cherry tomatoes, and bocconcini (or tinier!) mozzarella. And that’s it, that’s my whole menu for the rest of July. I’ll come back when I’m interesting again, okay?
… Fine, here’s the thing: I’ve never written up a recipe here for basil pesto with few bells or whistles because whenever I want to share a recipe for something really basic, I tend to talk myself out of it. Doesn’t the internet have enough pesto recipes, Deb? Why speak if you’re not adding something new to the conversation? This is my constant internal monologue. And yet! I do keep notes for how I make pesto on my computer to refer to every July because almost every recipe I find on front-page Google results is missing information I need, like a weight measurement for basil (good luck finding two cups of basil leaves that weigh the same or guessing how much of a larger plant you’d need for a couple cups of leaves), an accurate estimate of the amount of olive oil you’ll need, a reminder to please toast your pine nuts for maximum flavor, and, most importantly, the amount it makes and the amount of pasta the yield can generously coat. Yes, what I just described is called “a recipe.” And yes, this is a recipe blog. Maybe it’s time to finally close this loop.
