Deb Perelman's Blog, page 60

burst tomato galette with corn and zucchini

I have a long history of spectacular tomato tart failures. There was the one that enchanted me on TV a decade ago, with a parmesan crust, bacon, fine breadcrumbs and roasted garlic, that — several hours of work later — ended up tasting metallic and clashy against the acidic tomatoes. There was the tomato tarte tatin flop from a fancy French chef, for which I have only myself to blame. And two summers ago, there was an heirloom tomato galette, with colors like a rainbow, that fell apart before we ate it. The problem more often than not is a basic one: tomatoes are very wet and tart crusts need to stay fairly dry. But this has never stopped me from trying again, and I’m glad, because it led me to this.

Sort of. This too spun from a disaster, a gnocchi failure last week that involved these same fixings. But we were so in love with the combination — lightly charred and slumped cherry tomatoes, sauteed zucchini, crunchy sweet corn, scallions and parmesan that I’ve become convinced it should be applied to everything this month from pasta to farro to omelets.

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permalink to burst tomato galette with corn and zucchini | 77 comments to date | see more: Appetizer, Corn, Photo, Summer, Tarts/Quiche, Tomatoes, Vegetarian, Zucchini

charred corn crepes

For the last three summers, I have had “fresh corn crepes” on my cooking wish list. I was mesmerized by the idea of mixing roughly chopped kernels of the ridiculously sweet bi-color corn we get around here with eggs, milk, some melted butter and salt and cooking them thin and lacy in a pan. What I didn’t have was a clue of what I’d do with them, you know, besides just eating them. Whenever I thought about them, I fell down a culinary philosophical rabbit hole — Why not just put corn on a plain crepe? Does a recipe require a reason, a bigger purpose? Did this need to be done? Was it going to raise the bar somehow on crepes or was it just cool that you could do it? I have found myself at a handful of restaurants lately that have me questioning all the things I love to do in the kitchen (namely, mixing disparate things to make a new thing I think would be quite delicious) because I felt that they were innovating for the sake of innovating, and not actually making a grander version of anything while they were at it. Oh, you cannot imagine how dull the inside of my head has become. The worst outcome of this was that I never made the crepes, despite still wanting to very much.

Fortunately, after spending the first half of this week chasing a philosophically fascinating (“Can this really work?”) but utter flop (“No, it cannot.”) of a recipe, I was so tired of cooking and thinking about cooking I told my husband my earrings hurt. Like, I was tired to my earlobes. But I had corn. And I had milk and eggs and flour. And so I gave them a spin and they were every bit as delicious as I’d always imagined they’d be, especially the batch where I first charred the corn over a gas flame as a makeshift grill, like we once did here.

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permalink to charred corn crepes | 79 comments to date | see more: Corn, Pancakes, Photo, Summer, Tex-Mex, Vegetarian

banana, nutella and salted pistachio popsicles

Growing up, we made popsicles by pouring orange juice into these molds, letting them freeze and eating them outside so we didn’t sticky up the kitchen floor. But when I first bought these popsicles molds a year ago, did I put juice in them? No. I started dreaming about frozen cherry cheesecake popsicles and key lime pie paletas. I became obsessed with recreating the creamsicles of my youth, but only if the outside layer was orange and the middle was white. I began scratching out recipes for rum-mango-coconut popsicles, roasted peach and frozen yogurt on a stick and strawberry black pepper frozen ices that might taste like one of my favorite summer cocktails.

I first read about magical one-ingredient banana ice cream around the same time. If you haven’t, well, go buy some bananas. Freeze them until they’re almost quite but not completely frozen, then cut them into chunks and blend them in a food processor and you’ll have the most amazing soft serve banana gelato ever.

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permalink to banana, nutella and salted pistachio popsicles | 73 comments to date | see more: Bananas, Ice Cream/Sorbet, Photo, Quick, Summer

mama canales-garcia’s avocado-shrimp salsa

I’m not a summer person. Is it uncool to admit that you sort of hate sweating? Probably, so it’s a good thing you already knew I was a dork. New York City summers seem to be endless strings of heatwaves, and humidity so thick that even 82 degrees can feel like 105. Being pale and freckled, I seem to go through my body weight in sunscreen each summer, and still burn. Inside, the window air-conditioner units are always buzzing and always too cold; I consider summer something I must endure until my real love — crunchy fall leaves, cardigans, apple cider stands — returns in late September.

Or so I thought. This summer, something has shifted and it’s like I finally paid attention, and when I did, I realized I’ve had it all wrong. Summer is awesomely, fantastically busy, and with only the good stuff, long days and social butterfly weekends. We haven’t even put the kid to bed on Sunday night before we start discussing how many friends-with-pools/barbecues/ferry excursions/beach towns/playground sprinklers/grilled anything we might be able to stuff into the next weekend. When the heat starts melting your brain, and with it, any ridiculous attempts at dissecting something you read in The New Yorker that week, you get to instead have intense discussions about the ideal popsicle format, how to best fill water balloons, which beaches have the silkiest sand and who makes the best Aperol Spritz. (Buvette, you’re winning.) I realized that there’s barely a month left to summer yesterday, and felt sad, because we need more time. The whole time I’ve been kvetching, summer waged a quiet war on my view of the seasons (“Does fall have watermelon this good? I didn’t think so!” “When was the last time you saw a rainbow through a sprinkler in January?!”) and it won.

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permalink to mama canales-garcia’s avocado-shrimp salsa | 52 comments to date | see more: Gluten-Free, Photo, Quick, Salad, Seafood, Side Dish, Summer, Tex-Mex

hot fudge sundae cake

I realize that given the sheer number of two and three-layered, springform-bound and buttercream-shellacked celebration cakes I keep in the archives, you’d imagine that I had some pretty spectacular birthday cakes growing up. You’d be correct, but they were almost never homemade, not because I was suffering from cake-neglect, but because the only one I requested every year for my birthday was an ice cream cake, preferably from Carvel. Okay, insistently from Carvel, you know, the one in the strip mall at the end of the main road. The Carvel ice cream cake was, to me, as perfect as a June birthday cake could be — a layer each of chocolate and vanilla ice creams, separated by a smattering of Oreo-ish cookie rubble, coated with a suspiciously unbuttery buttercream and scattered with colored sprinkles. It was perfect. I loved it. I saw no reason anything should ever change.

And it might not have, except nowadays I have this problem, which is that when I vocalize the daydreamy ideas that pass through my head, such as, “I wonder what it would be like to make an ice cream cake from scratch… no, a sundae cake … no! A hot fudge sundae cake, with hot fudge and whipped cream and those awful-but-I-love-them jarred cherries…” instead of my so-called loved ones saying, “That’s ridiculous. Why would you make that if we could buy it at a store?” they encourage me. No, they goad me. Then they applaud my efforts and say “Again!” (True story: We think “Again!” exclaimed with glee, was the kid’s first word.) And then things like this happen.

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permalink to hot fudge sundae cake | 150 comments to date | see more: Celebration Cakes, Ice Cream/Sorbet, Photo, Summer

one-pan farro with tomatoes

I was not, in fact, looking for a new farro dish. It rarely occurs to me over the summer, when there’s more eggplant/zucchini/tomatoes/peaches/plums/berries than anyone could fathom going through in the scant weeks they’re available, to wish I had more whole grains in my diet. And since we’re being honest, only occasionally in times that it probably should, such as in February, when refined flours and pasta are used to fill the endless gap in growing seasons. But, as it happens, because I’m terrible at timely meal-planning, I was attempting to make this chicken for dinner a couple weeks ago and it wasn’t ready on time, or even close to it, and I remembered a one-pan linguine dish I’d read about in Martha Stewart Living last month that sounded fascinating. Realizing I had almost all the ingredients on hand, I rustled it up instead and felt like such a domestic diva, I nearly took a bow when I brought it out, but resisted, as I prefer to only drop one dish a season. In the dish, pasta, only enough water to cook it, an onion, garlic cloves, some cherry tomatoes, olive oil, basil, salt and red pepper flakes are combined cold, brought up to a boil and cooked until the pasta is al dente and everything else becomes the dish’s saucy servant, all in a single saucepan, all at once. I realize you’re all leaving me right now to make it this very moment, and I don’t blame you. At the very least, you need to bookmark the recipe for when you’re in a pinch, and really, when is anyone not?

The thing is, it totally fit the dinner bill when we needed it to but I wasn’t as crazy about it as I should have been. It was… soft. The sauce seemed a little gummy. I had barely finished my second bite when I became obsessed, yes, actually preoccupied to the point of sickness, with making the dish with farro instead. Farro, a variety of wheat grain (here’s a fantastic guide I found to more) that that has a meaty chew I find appealing in salads, soups, faux-risottos and more, isn’t bad the way it is usually cooked — in water, maybe with a pinch of salt — but it’s hard to argue it wouldn’t benefit from a more complex flavor base. To wit, you rarely see farro dishes or salads that don’t include at least one sweet thing (dried fruit or roasted-until-sweet vegetables), one bright thing (vinegar, lemon juice or a bit of pickled onion), one salty thing (crumbled feta, ricotta salata or anchovies), one crunchy thing (usually toasted nuts) and a good helping of a fat, usually olive oil, and if you’re lucky, all of the above. But imagine if farro arrived from its saucepan already perfectly balanced and ready to eat?

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permalink to one-pan farro with tomatoes | 74 comments to date | see more: Grain/Rice, Photo, Quick, Summer, Tomatoes, Vegetarian

grilled bacon salad with arugula and balsamic

You guys, I owe you an apology. It’s been nearly a month since I first encountered this grilled bacon salad and I couldn’t find a window to tell you about it until now. That wasn’t right of me. When you try it, you’ll understand.

This salad is so delicious, it has spread by a modern sort of word of mouth alone. I tried it out on a friend’s grill a few weeks ago, and as social media will go, she Instagram-ed a photo of it, which led to two of her friends making it on visual suggestion alone, and then friends of that friend’s too. I imagine a web of people now partaking in the awesomeness that is a grilled bacon salad and here you are with a direct line to Patient Zero, and I was too busy dry-rubbing chicken and making pecan sandies into pie crumbles to get around to mentioning it until now. Tsk-tsk.

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permalink to grilled bacon salad with arugula and balsamic | 82 comments to date | see more: Appetizer, Arugula, Grilling, Meat, Salad, Summer

slow-and-low dry rub oven chicken

Five years ago, I fell in love with dry-rub barbecue. Prior to the summer of 2008, I naively believed that the only way to make ribs deliciously on the grill was to mop them with copious amounts of a wet, tomato-based barbecue sauce. I know, I know, silly Deb, but what can you really expect from a Yankee?

Under my friend Molly’s tutelage, I learned the error of my ways. The thing is, no matter how unappealing the word “dry” may sound against meat of any sort, the results are anything but. While a wet sauce just wants to roll or evaporate off your meat as it cooks, the dry rub spices adhere themselves to it, almost crusting in the meltingly tender meat within as it cooks slow-and-low over a the grill. It loses none of its punch, no matter how long it cooks. You might have some barbecue sauce around when you’re done as a dip for the meat, but there’s so much flavor from that spice crust, you probably won’t need it.

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permalink to slow-and-low dry rub oven chicken | 85 comments to date | see more: Grilling, Meat, Photo, Poultry, Summer

peach and pecan sandy crumble

If you think about it, isn’t it strange that we’ve nominated pie as our iconic summer dessert? Do understand, I say this as someone who frequently daydreams about going around the country and teaching people to make pie with a bare minimum of fuss, because I think the only thing standing between you and someone who effortlessly throws pies together because you heard someone was coming over is someone talking you through it once or twice… But I will also fully admit: pie is a pest. It requires very cold fat to be carefully worked into a floury mix until the pieces are exactly the right size. Too small, your crust is flat and crunchy. Too big, butter pools out and burns, leaving sad, tough flakes for crust. Too warm, the bits go small and absorb into the flour. Too cold, good luck rolling it out! And before you even know if the trouble will be worth it, you’ve got to roll out your crust with no holes or tears or your fruit filling will leak through and permanently glue pie-to-pan. And the fruit! Too thick, your pie cuts freakishly like Jell-O; too thin, it spills out everywhere, leaving a hollow crust in its wake. And don’t even get me started on lattice-tops. They’re for really sick people.

Given all of these high stakes, it’s a wonder we don’t all spend our summers, exclusively extolling the virtues of fruit crisps and crumbles, because they’re pie’s laid-back, easy-breezy sibling, the one whose arrival always brings applause. They give you nothing to carefully roll out; you just messily sprinkle the so-called “crust” over the top of the fruit, which can be thickened or not at all because if you’re not slicing it, who cares if it slumps? (And if the thought of fruit that sighs and puddles out onto a plate isn’t more appealing to you than fruit that stands up straight when you slice it, well, I beg to differ.) And the fat! Instead of asking butter to do the thing it would very least like to do on a hot day — that is, to try to stay cold — you begin by melting it.

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permalink to peach and pecan sandy crumble | 84 comments to date | see more: Peach, Photo, Summer, Tarts/Pies

pickled vegetable sandwich slaw

If you’re one of those people who saw the word “pickled” in the title and said “Ugh, no, sorry, not for me,” do know, I was the same not too long ago and encourage you to fight the good fight for as long as you can, because once your tastes cross over to the vinegar side, there’s little going back.

Something of a gateway pickle, these should be eyed suspiciously as well. The thing is, one day you’re eating the foods you’ve always liked — sandwiches, salads, tacos, cheese — and you wouldn’t change a single thing. And then, once day, the quadruple-threat crunch/sweet/salty/punch of a pickle gets under your skin and suddenly, the food landscape is a bleak, depressing place without them. You need pickled red onions on your tacos, pickled celery in your tuna and egg salads, cucumber slices in your potato salads, grapes with your sharp cheeses and pickled carrot sticks in the fridge whenever the mood strikes, and nothing’s ever quite right without them again. I can find a clear demarcation in my pre- and post-pickle junkie days (it’s just about 10 (!) years ago, when I took up with this Russian I married) and think there’s still hope for you. Here, how about some granita instead?

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permalink to pickled vegetable sandwich slaw | 82 comments to date | see more: Photo, Pickled, Picnics, Salad, Sandwich, Side Dish, Summer, Vegetarian