Deb Perelman's Blog, page 45

picnic pink lemonade

For reasons I cannot adequately put my finger on, if you show up to a potluck or picnic this weekend with carafes of freshly-squeezed lemonade, you will be welcomed and adored, but if you show up with the same carafes of freshly-made pink lemonade, people will actually freak out. Why is pink lemonade so much more exciting than the pale yellow that accurately depicts the lemons from which it is derived? It’s a mystery to me as well but I — a person who does not own a single pink garment and likes to consider myself immune to pastel-tinted charms — will always reach for it first.

Also fun is to ask a roomful of a people what makes pink lemonade pink, well aside from the Red Dye #40 in most bottled versions, and to realize that none of use really know. We’ve discussed it here a couple summers ago and while many of the suggestions are sound and probably delicious — grenadine! hibiscus! pink lemons! — I tend to gravitate instead to the fresh berries that hit the markets during the peak lemonade season ahead. Or, uh, distant-origin strawberry, blackberries and raspberries that were on sale this past weekend. Er, it’s not like we were growing lemons in our New York City fire escapes anyhow, as much fun as it would be.

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permalink to picnic pink lemonade | 24 comments to date | see more: Blackberries, Drinks, Lemon, Photo, Picnics, Raspberries, Strawberries, Summer

pasta salad with roasted tomatoes

For someone who is patently terrified of all the offerings in the deli case pasta salad universe — the tri-colore, mayo-slicked, sugar-sweetened, canned tuna-flecked, curry powder-ed, and dotted with green peppers, raisins or ohgodboth — I sure spend a spectacular amount of each summer trying to come up with cold pasta preparations I’d find agreeable. I know that there’s one out there I could love and could love me back, but although a few attempts have gotten me closer, and even temporarily sated, my perfect picnic pasta salad eluded me.

Late last summer, I began forming an idea of how to make this, a pasta salad that would be loud, punchy and full of texture where others are mellow and limp. My notes are adamant about a well-toasted crunch, such as pine nuts, a good salty crumbled cheese, like ricotta salata or feta, chopped black olives, such as those oil-cured ones I was slowly developing an affection for, and pasta taken off the stove when it’s an aggressive al dente, even two minutes before tender “doneness” instead of one, so that no matter how long it soaks in dressing, it does not collapse. But I got stuck on the last ingredient, because what I really wanted in there was not those “sun-dried” tomatoes you find in dry-packs and jars, but these wondrously slow-baked oven tomatoes, all chewy, tart and intense.

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permalink to pasta salad with roasted tomatoes | 30 comments to date | see more: Pasta, Photo, Picnics, Salad, Summer, Tomatoes, Vegetarian

swirled berry yogurt popsicles

In the past, I have made the argument that all sorts of absurd things, from fruit crisps to slab pies, pizza, salade lyonnaise, risotto, stuffing (!), latkes, cookie bars and even shamelessly decadent cakes rolled in brown butter and cinnamon sugar deserve inclusion in the first meal of the day. You might say I have no shame at all. I might say that I cleverly rail against the narrow confines of that which we know as breakfast. You might say I’ve gone too far this time, but I’m going to do it anyway: I’m going to make the argument that breakfast popsicles deserve to become a thing.

New York City theoretically has four seasons, but talk to anyone who lives here (or don’t, they will probably complain to you about this unsolicited, um, not that we know any New Yorkers like that) and they will tell you that we really only have two — face-freezing wintry mix and sticky concrete inferno, with about two weeks in-between of all that is good and glorious on this earth (a popcorn-like explosion of blossoms from treetops to sidewalks and fiery carpets of every color foliage imaginable), or in modern terms, the stuff of which “no filter” Instagrams are made. And, lo, not a minute after those spring petals hit the gutters, we had our first few days of eau de hot trash and a peculiar brand of cloying airlessness at which inner cities excel and I wanted to climb into the freezer and never leave.

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permalink to swirled berry yogurt popsicles | 79 comments to date | see more: Blackberries, Breakfast, Photo, Popsicles, Summer

fake shack burger

The last time I was a human incubator of a future generation of my family, my OB’s office — a place you cumulatively spend a spectacular amount of time over the course of 40 weeks — was diagonally across the street from the Upper West Side Shake Shack, and I only ate there once. I understand if this means we can no longer be friends; I am personally embarrassed to know this about me too. Where were my priorities? I have spent years mourning this missed opportunity to not only eat a weekly Shackburger but to have made better use of my last weeks of kid-free leisurely lunches for years to come. The reason is even less sympathetic: I didn’t like hamburgers, or so I thought. They were so thick, so dauntingly large and one-note, so soft and damp inside, I couldn’t for the life of me imagine what made them popular.

In the final week before my firstborn was given an eviction notice, my husband joined me for an appointment and afterward, gently pulled me in the direction of the Shake Shack. It was the middle of a weekday and there was barely a line, if you can imagine something so absurd. I settled in for a burger and fries and … can I pause for a moment? I’m getting verklempt, guys… I had a moment and that moment was a realization that I didn’t dislike burgers I disliked those monstrous things that were all the rage a few years ago. This burger was totally different — thin, unevenly shaped craggy-edged with crispy salty bits and it sat on a tender toasted bun with a perfect sauce, thinly sliced pickles, tomatoes, a ruffle of lettuce and yet wasn’t too tall to eat a bite of without unhinging my jaw like a snake that swallowed a goat (I’m sorry, second reference in one month, I can stop anytime). It wasn’t so massive that I had to take a nap when I was done, it was my first smash-style burger and it was everything. It’s probably for the best that this guy came along the next week, because I cannot imagine the trouble I would have gotten into if I had many more excuses to eat there.

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permalink to fake shack burger | 13 comments to date | see more: Budget, Grilling, Meat, Photo, Summer

toasted marshmallow milkshake

Almost exactly 5 years ago, in celebration us both signing contracts to write cookbooks, I met a friend* for lunch at a burger joint called The Stand on East 12th Street, and we finished the meal with something the menu declared a toasted marshmallow milkshake. I don’t remember a thing about the burger, but I do know that pretty much every conversation I had in the weeks that followed went like this: “The weather is so nice today!” “It would be perfect for a toasted marshmallow milkshake, don’t you think?” “How is your son sleeping these days?” “Did I tell you about this toasted marshmallow milkshake I had? Let me tell you about this toasted marshmallow milkshake I had.” “Can you believe this Deepwater Horizon mess?” “Toasted marshmallow milkshake, toasted marshmallow milkshake toasted marshmallow milkshake.” You could argue it had some impact on me.

I don’t know what happened after that. Maybe I didn’t get much sleep that year? Maybe I was busy writing a book? Maybe I was scared I couldn’t be trusted around a blender full of toasted marshmallow milkshake because things like this happen? All I know is that I failed you, failed to pave the milkshake’s path from 12th Street to your blender and now, as we approach ice cream season once again, it’s time to make things right.

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permalink to toasted marshmallow milkshake | 75 comments to date | see more: Drinks, Ice Cream/Sorbet, Photo, Summer

mushrooms and greens with toast

Regarding the ever-present stacks of cookbooks around the apartment, my mother joked to me on Sunday that I should open a library. She’s probably right. I don’t think that a week goes by that I don’t* receive at least one new cookbook and I hardly know where to dive in. And don’t get me wrong, I too swoon over the currently in-demand aesthetic of vertically oriented, dimly lit photos of reclaimed weathered barnwood tables boasting sauce splatters and variations on kale on matte pages bound in jacketless books. It’s just that they’re all starting to jumble together.

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permalink to mushrooms and greens with toast | 93 comments to date | see more: Casserole, Greens, Kale, Mushrooms, Photo, Vegetarian, Weeknight Favorite

liège waffles

Psst. I know what everyone is really hoping you’ll cook this weekend, and I’m sorry, it is not that kale salad. Okay, maybe not if these people are gluten-free, or opposed to butter, burnt sugar and stretchy yeasted breakfast treats. You probably shouldn’t make this for anyone on a juice cleanse or auditioning a paleo lifestyle. And now that I’ve ruled most of the people on this earth out, maybe I should stop talking about “everyone” when what I really mean is me.

I have never been to Belgium, but the further I get along in this whole incubation process, the more I predictably long for the kinds of trips that will seem impossible to pull off for some time. I’d like to have an ale, probably two, in some ancient cobblestoned courtyard, eating pommes frites (RIP, sigh) from paper cones and then stumble around Bruges, gazing at canals and medieval architecture, eating my way through one stand after another until only the first paragraph’s kale salad will save me.

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permalink to liège waffles | 99 comments to date | see more: Breakfast, Photo, Waffles

not derby pie bars

Several awesome things are happening this weekend: babysitting, the promise of assaulting my friends’ eyeballs with my latest hopeless attempt at “fashion” [a that fits perfectly enough now in month eight to only a give off a slight snake-that’s-swallowed-a-goat vibe — Google it. I’ll wait here, cracking up], a party that celebrates both some fight that I guess must be a big deal or something and, if that were not enough, the Kentucky Derby. Needless to say, all excuses to fete bourbon, mint, big hats and horsies are taken seriously around here, especially because it’s finally given me a chance to talk about the deliciousness that is Not Derby Pie.

Have you ever had Actual Derby Pie? Created in 1950 at the Melrose Inn in Prospect, Kentucky, the gooey pie is studded with chocolate and walnuts and a splash of bourbon,* a bit like a pecan pie minus the heaps of corn syrup. I was briefly in Louisville a couple years ago, and predictably made a point of trying all of the bourbon (oops) and at least one wedge of this pie. However — please forgive me, Kentucky — I was underwhelmed. It was so sweet and so gooey, I wondered if I could make it at home, thinner, with a little crunchy salt and with more depth of flavor (deeply toasted nuts, brown sugar, brown butter and vanilla, perhaps?). Aren’t Yankees the worst?

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permalink to not derby pie bars | 63 comments to date | see more: Bars, Bourbon, Chocolate, Photo, Tarts/Pies

crispy broccoli with lemon and garlic

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I may have suddenly, and at least a month earlier than I’d hoped, reached the slightly less awesome phase of pregnancy, which I suspect is nature’s way of ensuring that despite all of the great things about gestating — thick, shiny hair! elastic-waist pants! people actually encouraging you to be lazy! — you will have little desire to stay this way forever.

It started two Mondays ago when all of my shirts simultaneously stopped fitting, as if they were in a pact with each other to make a cold-bellied mockery of my attempts to avoid maternity clothing this time around. Then, this old lady I swim with told me I was looking “huge” and evidently undaunted by the dripping sarcasm in my “thanks?” asked how was I going to make it to July. Was I sure I was not carrying twins? I was going to need an oxygen tank to get around by summer! When I came home and my husband asked how my swim was, I burst into tears because all of these feelings have made me extra-lame to be around. Then, as if on cue, swimming got about 3x harder. Was the water always this glue-like? Did I always have to take this many breaths per lap? I joked to the nurse at my doctor’s office that the second I lay down, even for a second, this child starts what could only be interpreted as 1980’s Legwarmer, Headband and Hightops Aerobics and she said “that’s exactly what it’s going to be like when it comes out!” leading my husband and I to shake in terror at the idea that every time we sit down — basically our favorite thing, because it’s the best thing — for the next several years, something will happen that makes us have to stand up, even though as second-time parents we know this to be the truth.

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permalink to crispy broccoli with lemon and garlic | 55 comments to date | see more: Broccoli, Budget, Lemon, Side Dish, Vegetarian

salted chocolate chunk cookies

I would like to go on record as stating that I was not in the market for a new chocolate chip cookie recipe. Maybe I’m getting a little cranky in my advanced food blogging age, but I have found little evidence over the years that there’s anything new to add to the chocolate chip cookie conversation. (See: Item #9.) In fact, whenever there has been a new/perfect/ideal/ultimate/consummate recipe making the rounds and I have eventually caved and tried it, I’m generally underwhelmed, not because they are not good — I mean, I’m not dead inside, no chocolate chip cookies go to waste around here — but because they’re just weren’t new or different or special enough to get me to permanently stray from my go-to. *

There is one core recipe for chocolate chip cookies, that which was named after the Toll House Inn in Whitman, Massachusetts, where Ruth Graves Wakefield’s invention was published in a 1936 cookbook. Most modern versions play off of it in one way or another, always in the pursuit of a “better” cookie but rarely through the practice of simplicity. Some require cake flour, bread flour, or a combination thereof, which has always perplexed me as you’d think a mix of high- and low-gluten flour would average out back to approximately an all-purpose flour level? Regardless, I follow these recipes to the letter, hoping to glean something new.

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permalink to salted chocolate chunk cookies | 63 comments to date | see more: Chocolate, Cookie, Photo