Deb Perelman's Blog, page 52
August 7, 2014
apricot pistachio squares
Let me just get the obvious out of the way because I know what you’re thinking: what am I doing here? Shouldn’t I be packing for our move, which is less than 24 hours from now? These are all valid questions, but you see, there is history here, a long history of kitchen-related procrastination. Two days before our last move, I sheeted pasta and peeled favas. I spent the last week of my pregnancy stocking the freezer with foods to
Ahem. I’ve been in a bit of a fervor this summer over the apricots from Red Jacket Orchards. I shared a photo of them the other day and someone asked me what I was going to make with them and I was confused. Make? With apricots? Why on earth would you make something with apricots, when you could eat them as-is, even four in a row as my son did before my dropped jaw yesterday. But then the next wave of procrastination hit and why, yes, making something with apricots was a brilliant idea!
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permalink to apricot pistachio squares | 51 comments to date | see more: Apricots, Bars, Photo, Summer, Tarts/Pies
August 4, 2014
cold noodles with miso, lime and ginger
Because we did not move this past weekend after all, we ended up with a bit of free time which we used to do some overdue purging. I’m sorry if this shatters your misplaced imagine of me as some sort of domestic goddess, but my signature move is shoving something into a closet and slamming the door before anything falls out and then willfully ignoring its pleas for mercy — come on, you do it too, right? anyone? Sigh. And so we dug out, removing three giant trash bags of stuff we should have gotten rid of a while ago, two of clothes and one of (shh, please don’t tell on us) toys. Just 10 or 12 move before this apartment is Pinterest-ready! i.e. vast amounts of open space uncluttered by the existence of actual human beings.
I also unearthed all sorts of wonders I’ve hung onto for far too long to get rid of now, such as my most prized possession of the year 1982, a hairband from the original Annie movie, my lifeguard certification card from 1996 and the dorky Ann Taylor shirt I was wearing when I met my husband in 2003, something you’ll no doubt see Stacy London clucking her tongue over one day when I finally land my own What Not To Wear episode (a girl can dream, right?).
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permalink to cold noodles with miso, lime and ginger | 20 comments to date | see more: Cucumber, Japanese, Pasta, Photo, Radishes, Summer, Vegetarian
July 31, 2014
blueberry crumb cake
Theoretically, we are supposed to move this Saturday, but evidence is mounting — in the form of a kitchen without countertops or appliances, a toilet in the middle of the living room, and a peeling, black bathtub that looks like the kind place you’d find a horror movie victim — that it might not happen. Did I mention the great plume of drywall dust from the doorway they’re sawing out of a wall today? Nothing that 48 hours can’t sort out, right?
It’s a good thing, in Opposite Land, that we are not the kind of people who plan every element of a big event like a move up to a month out, with each detail, from sending the kid to his grandparents for a couple nights so he doesn’t have to watch all shh, most of his toys get boxed up, or ordering furniture to be delivered that morning, furniture we have exactly no space for in our current overfilled apartment. I realize that I sound like we’re at Stress Level: Hip Flask this week, but it’s not so bad, mostly because I’ve chosen instead to focus my energies this month on blueberry crumb cake studies.
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permalink to blueberry crumb cake | 53 comments to date | see more: Blueberries, Everyday Cakes, Photo, Summer
July 29, 2014
three-ingredient summertime salsa
There’s nothing worth eating in Texas that Lisa Fain can’t teach you to make better in your own kitchen, from perfect, simple carnitas, kolaches, and chicken-fried steak to breakfast tacos, frito pie and peach buttermilk ice cream, plus two cookbooks worth of wonders (drool break for the buttermilk and bacon fat flour tortillas from her latest) but my favorite recipe of hers uses only three ingredients and is addictive enough to put on everything.
Google offers windows into at least 3.8 million iterations of “perfect homemade salsa” — I mean, the red, spicy stuff we went through two jars a week of when I was a freshman in college — but I find most of them terrifyingly complicated. Many have nearly a dozen ingredients ranging from sugar to cumin, or call for very specific brands of tomatoes, like Ro-Tel, which isn’t particularly easy to find outside of Texas or well-stocked bodegas in NYC. Fain’s recipe shrugs at all this fussing, and tells you to go to the market when tomatoes are overflowing, halve a bunch on a tray along with a couple garlic cloves and jalapenos, broil them until they’re charred and blend them until you get your desired consistency and just forget about eating salsa another way ever again.
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July 24, 2014
bourbon slush punch
Nothing to see here, guys.
Really, you wouldn’t like this. Who’d want to drink a half-frozen blend of strong tea, lemonade, orange juice and bourbon garnished with fresh mint on a sticky, hot summer day? It might give you a little brain freeze. It would probably feel like liquid air conditioning. It could improve your outlook to the point that you might forget to dread the next heat wave. Nothing good could come of this.
Trust me, I know from experience. My friends brought bags of this slush up to their roof last month and I had but a few crunchy sips before I turned to my husband and said, “I think I’m starting to like summer in the city.” He said, “Whoa. Slow down there!” And we both agreed that this was a very dangerous drink to have on hand and that we should only finish our glass and at most one more to be safe.
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permalink to bourbon slush punch | 12 comments to date | see more: Drinks, Lemon, Orange, Photo, Summer
July 22, 2014
summer squash gratin with salsa verde
For someone who has, at best, only moderate interest in eating all things zucchini and summer squash, this site’s archives tell different story. I mean, how about a torte, some fritters, zucchini bread or zucchini bread pancakes? Maybe a rice gratin, crisps or my favorite 5-minute side dish is more your speed? The 40-plus recipes from previous summers would make you think I jump for joy when the inevitable August glut of green and yellow piles at the Greenmarkets; instead, I approach them warily.
I blame my weird need for a challenge. I find zucchini and summer squash a little… slippery and limp in most dishes. It’s usually under-seasoned. But rather than wear my failure to see what others do in a food as a badge of honor, it bothers me. I want to be proven wrong. Show me the light, crooknecks and cocozzelles!
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permalink to summer squash gratin with salsa verde | 31 comments to date | see more: Photo, Side Dish, Summer, Summer Squash, Zucchini
July 17, 2014
grilled peach splits + news!
The problem, if there could be one, is that if a 30-something with a kid out of diapers ever says to a group of people, “I have news!” certain presumptions are made. So, to quell any wild ideas before they take off, no, this is not that kind of news. I’m sorry; we’re bummed too.
But I have other news, which means we are so overdue for a catch-up/tell-all/gossip session, so pull up a chair. I’ll go first:
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permalink to grilled peach splits + news! | 3 comments to date | see more: Announcements, Grilling, Ice Cream/Sorbet, Peach, Summer
July 14, 2014
easiest fridge dill pickles
Every summer, I make a note on my Oh My God Good Vegetables Are Finally Here! cooking to-do list (what, you don’t keep one?) to post about how to make classic dill pickles. Every week they’re available, I pick up nearly a bucket of perfect-for-pickling kirby cucumbers from the Greenmarket for my cucumber-junkie family with the greatest intention of finally making good on this promise. And I never, ever do. It might be that the first couple times I tried, many years ago, my always-too-hot kitchen molded both jars, traumatizing me at the end of the jars’ incubation periods. It might be that because I live in NYC, when I want an insanely good sour pickle, I just go to The Pickle Guys on Essex Street or track down some from Guss’. Like bagels, killer soup dumplings, or Halal cart street meat, amazing pickles are in a category of food you have to be extremely driven and possibly cuckoo to make at home in NYC. I mean, I am, but apparently not enough.
I make these instead. These are our go-to fridge pickle, and they are ludicrously easy. Do you have salt? Do you have vinegar? You’re set. They’re passable an hour later, excellent 6 to 8 hours later, and you can also enjoy them three weeks from now — though by then, we’ll be on our third batch.
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permalink to easiest fridge dill pickles | 19 comments to date | see more: Cucumber, Photo, Pickled, Quick, Vegetarian
July 10, 2014
brownie ice cream sandwiches
Within reason, I think if you’re craving something, you should go for it, although this theory is mostly born of my own poor logic. I’ve all too many times craved, say, a brownie but thought I shouldn’t eat a brownie and so instead snacked on (just for a completely random example) 12 almonds, 1 slice of cheese, half an apple, 1 banana and then, oops, a handful of chocolate chips, amounting roughly 3x the calories of a brownie, a brownie that I craved exactly as much as I did 500 calories ago. And so, when I really want a brownie, I make my favorite brownies and we each eat one and then I stash the rest in the freezer, so they are not out on the counter, calling to me that we haven’t been cut in a straight line and you should really even us out or we’re going to go bad soon and you don’t want us to go to waste or any of those things that brownies tell me when we’re alone together.
[Hm, here I should probably interject some sort of "sure, okay, brownies talk to me but I'm not like crazy or anything; it's not weird. Brownies talk to everyone, right? Haha?" reassurance but I'm not going to. I'm going to make this as awkward as possible.]
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permalink to brownie ice cream sandwiches | 36 comments to date | see more: Chocolate, Ice Cream/Sorbet, Photo, Summer
July 7, 2014
sticky sesame chicken wings
On the very long list of things that I am convinced that other people do effortlessly while I typical flail and fail in the face of — dancing, running, walking from one room to another without forgetting what they were looking for — making dinner on a regular basis with a minimum of brow sweat and complaining is near the top.
It likely doesn’t help that I often spend my cooking hours chasing some very specific idea (a star! a pretzel-y pretzel!) of what I want to cook next, and that this item may or may not amount to dinner, leading to countless days when I realize at 5 p.m. that I have an incoming hangry preschooler and very little plan for what to feed us. A domestic goddess, I hope you never mistake me for.
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permalink to sticky sesame chicken wings | 85 comments to date | see more: Photo, Poultry, Quick, Weeknight Favorite
