This weekend flew by faster than a blink of an eye but no matter how short it seemed, it was filled with play and incredible, edible fun. Evan, Sophia and my nephew Alex went to the Please Touch Museum where the kids tried their hand at being explorers, bus drivers, metro riders, astronauts and musicians. Evan’s uncle is a talented pianist and this picture here gives me hope that musical aptitude is in her genes.
There were some serious naps after such fun for Sophia and also for us grown ups. When we did recover from all the play, we cooked and spent time with family. I made pasta from scratch because … because it is delicious when it is handmade and because I had the best helper.
We recently acquired this cherry red pro-sumer pasta maker and it is a joy to use. For those who are curious, the pasta maker is a Marcato Atlas Pasta Machine in red.
This right here is fettuccine dressed with a lemon-sage sauce and tossed with toasted walnuts. Beautiful to look at and so delicious. There were other culinary delights but the experience of making pasta with Sophia topped them all.
Quite an eventful weekend around here. In addition to some great quality time with our nephew, we treated Eliza to a glamor shoot in honor of her recently passed 5th month birthday and spent some time outdoors. We took advantage of a mild Sunday to walk to Head House Square and peruse a Farmer’s Market. Turnips, berries, apples, pears, local cheeses, breads and even mmmm… chocolates were all on display looking vibrant and keeping the usually more subdued, at least on a Sunday, square quite lively. Later that evening, we walked to Franklin Square and enjoyed a light and music show which Sophia absolutely loved. And even though we don’t celebrate Christmas, it is hard not to get into the spirit of the season when everything is lit up and looks so festive.
Eliza napped through the festivities which was just as well. We were able to focus on Sophia and enjoy her excitement.
Having been quite absent from the kitchen the last two days, I decided to warm up our kitchen and home by making the dough for a chocolate babka. The recipe isn’t particularly difficult, but it does present one challenge for me personally—having to wait overnight for the dough to rise. If you know me at all, you will know that I am not patient in general and even less so when it comes to desserts and chocolate in particular. Patience I lack but not will power and so Sophia and I collaborated on the dough and waited for it to rise overnight. We made the filling and baked them off on Monday evening. The result is … well, judge for yourself.
I’ve begun to grow tired of familiar flavor profiles and decided to look around for some inspiration. Fascinated by southeast asian and indian cuisines for a long time now, I find their spicy and flavor-forward profiles incredibly inviting. Lemongrass, to me, is an incredible edible the aroma of which is so fragrant that it instantly perks up anything you add it to. It just so happens that lemongrass goes great with ginger, garlic and chiles (which I did not use this time around). These aromatics lend themselves naturally to infusing their flavor into coconut milk and make the perfect sauce.
Cooking Time: 30 minutes
Prep Time: 15 minutes
Ingredients:
2 stalks of lemongrass (~6 inches each) battered and minced
2 inch knob of ginger, minced
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1.5 lbs ground chicken
1 tsp salt
1/2 cup Panko bread crumbs
1 egg
15 oz coconut milk
1 tbsp fish oil
juice of 1 lime
3 tbsp vegetable oil
Instructions:
Add 1 tbsp of vegetable oil, lemongrass, ginger and garlic to a large, 12 inch, stainless steel skillet and sauté on medium heat until the aromatics are translucent and tender or about 10 minutes. Meanwhile combine the ground chicken, salt, bread crumbs and egg in a bowl mixing lightly. Add half of the aromatics to the meat mixture and reserve the remaining half in a dish. Add the remaining 2 tbsp oil to the skillet. Form 12-15 meatballs and place in the heated oil in the skillet searing them until golden brown on all sides ~10 minutes. You may have to sear the meatballs in two batches to avoid crowding. Once all the meatballs are browned, add the remainder of the aromatics back into the pan followed by coconut milk. The milk will help deglaze the pan. Make sure to use a wooden spatula to scrape up all the bits of browned chicken off. Stir in the fish sauce and lime juice to the pan. Return the meatballs to the pan, cover and cook for 6-8 minutes or until the meatballs are cooked through. Serve with vermicelli rice noodles and garnish with cilantro. Enjoy!
Halloween has yet to come and I am ready for something other than pumpkin in my culinary repertoire. And I haven’t had a single pumpkin spice latte or pumpkin anything this season yet. Just looking at all the pumpkins, everywhere and all the time has sated my appetite for pumpkins. And so I am officially moving past pumpkins onto other fall flavors such as cranberries. Tart and rich in flavor not to mention nutrients these little berries are often a one-appearance a year sort of a food at our Thanksgiving table. Furthermore, more often than not, the single appearance is out of a can and resembling something gooey and unappealing. I am on a mission to reinvigorate our love of all things cranberry with non other than cranberry pecan muffins. The pecans are rich and buttery and the cranberries offer a perfect counterpoint of tartness.
Recipe:
Ingredients:
Streusel Topping:
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon brown sugar, packed
2 tbsp. granulated sugar
1/8 tsp. salt
1/2 cup pecans
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into 8 pieces
Batter:
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled
2 large eggs
1/2 cup whole milk
1.25 cups pecans
1 cup granulated sugar
1.5 cups all-purpose flour
1.5 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
2 cups fresh cranberries
2 tsp. powdered sugar
Instructions:
Pulse all but the last ingredients of the streusel topping in your food processor. Add the butter making sure to separate the pieces of butter around the bowl. Pulse a few more times until the topping resembles wet sand. Pour into a bowl, cover and refrigerate. Preheat the oven to 425*F.
Without washing out the food processor, pulse the pecans and sugar for the batter. Whisk the butter, eggs and milk together and add the pecan/sugar mix. Whisk thoroughly, add salt and baking powder. Add flour and mix just enough to ensure that the flour is absorbed. Without washing out the food processor, pulse the powdered sugar and cranberries until the cranberries are roughly chopped (5-6 times). Add the mixture to the batter and mix carefully. Allow the batter to stand for 10 minutes. Meanwhile, grease a muffin baking dish. After ten minutes, scoop the batter into the individual tins ensuring that it is divided evenly. Spoon 1.5 tbsp. of the streusel topping on each muffin gently pressing. Bake for 17 minutes if using convection or 18-19 otherwise. Enjoy!
Philadelphia has changed so much so that I at times feel like a tourist in my own hometown. Sure the corner convenience store is still there as are the dry cleaners but our old gym (we used to go to the gym before we had kids) is now an art gallery displaying woodworking masterpieces that have me salivating every time I walk by. We ventured out into old city on a mini-date without our very own mini dates. Our first stop was at this new (at least to us) restaurant which features a pretty awesome beer garden. The beer garden overlooks the enclosed liberty bell and is entirely outdoors flanked by industrial pillars that are canopied by all manner of lush, country-style greenery. Patrons sit on wooden stumps and mismatched chairs at small tables playing Jenga with a beverage in hand while nestling their feet into pebbles. Small lights that dot the canopy and music complete the tranquil space. If you didn’t try to peer through the greenery or hear the occasional duck boat, you’d never think you were in the city or much less in a tourist-laden part of the city.
Having thoroughly enjoyed the sun, peace and quiet, I returned home and decided that something sunny and yet warming was in order. What better to make than a fall corn chowder.
Fall Corn Chowder
Ingredients:
3 slices of thick-cut bacon
1 medium onion, minced
2 garlic cloves
1/3 cup flour
3 1-lb bags of frozen corn
3.5 cups of low-sodium chicken broth
2 cups milk
12 oz yukon gold potatoes cut into 1 cm cubes
3 sprigs of thyme, taken off the stem and minced
1 cup heavy cream
Cooking Instructions:
Cut the bacon into small pieces and place into a large pot. Turn the heat to low-medium and cook until the bacon is completely rendered and crispy. Remove the bacon onto a paper-towel lined plate and set aside. Add the onion to the pot along with 1/2 teaspoon of salt and cook until softened or about 8 minutes. Add the garlic, cook for 1 minute until fragrant and add flour. Mix well and continue cooking until the flour is no longer visible or 1-2 minutes. Add 2.5 cups of chicken broth, the milk, reserved bacon and bring to a simmer.
Meanwhile take 1/3 of the frozen corn and pulse in blender with 1 cup of broth until the corn is chopped fine but not a paste. Dice the potatoes and add those, the pulsed corn and the remainder of the corn along with the thyme to the pot. Simmer until the potatoes are almost cooked through (10-15 minutes). Add the heavy cream and cook a 5 more minutes until the corn and potatoes are just cooked through. Add salt to taste and serve.
Cooking, feeding and introducing our little eaters to a variety of foods is a topic that is close to our hearts. Our culinary chronicles and the recipes that I post attest to our ardent desire to raise children who are enthusiastic eaters with a large palate and willingness to try just about anything. I was reminded about children’s finicky eating habits at the weekend celebration when a family member was very surprised to see Sophia eating a bagel with cream cheese and lox. Why wouldn’t Sophia be eating a bagel with lox? Lox is salted fish and I know for a fact that our families grew up eating smoked and pickled fish since early childhood.
Sophia is not a huge eater, her slim build attests to that, but she has a huge range of foods that she eats including smoked and salted fish. I shouldn’t sound smug and know-it-all about introducing kids to new foods since we have yet to see if Eliza will be as big of a culinary enthusiast. And so I can only share my philosophy on raising a savvy eater. Both Evan and I are adventurous eaters though at least in his case, that was not always true. He has over the last twelve years significantly expanded his palate and now even I strive to keep up with his adventurous nature (trying pickled pork ear is not always an easy feat for a very pregnant woman but I’ve done it and it was quite good).
We both believe that attitude plays a huge role in any undertaking and that includes cooking and eating. We love to cook and almost never look at it as a chore instead choosing to welcome ingredients and new recipes into our kitchen involving Sophia to partake in prep. work and cooking. We try, even though she is still very young, to have conversations during dinner asking each other about our days and what we are going to do the next day or over the weekend. I won’t lie and say that cartoons have made a permanent exit from our dinner table but they are not as significant of a presence at every meal as they used to be.
We started involving Sophia into our cooking about a year ago and before that, we involved her in menu planning and growing our ingredients in our little garden in Maryland. Nowadays, Sophia readily offers to help us cook and routinely tries the things we chop and dice while watching pasta boil or meat brown on the stove. I try to talk to her about what happens when we are cooking. Yesterday we talked about our eyes watering when we cut onions. Evan didn’t simplify the answer much chiming in with “a sulfuric compound escapes the onion when its cut into and makes our eyes watery”.
Our cooking approach extends to our eating approach whereby we don’t make a huge deal out of new foods and I will often offer her something new without announcing it and sometimes more or less incognito. We also do not subscribe to the “diner” philosophy and try to cook dishes we can all eat as a family instead of succumbing to making several dishes to please every family member. But after all is said and done, Sophia is still a child and she does have her own preferences. She doesn’t like melted cheese and would gladly eat dark chocolate at every meal as her main course. She likes pomegranates and all things sour and tangy. Sophia will usually choose a salty pretzel over ice cream. Her favorite condiment is furikake (shaved bonito fish flakes, seaweed, and sesame seeds). We like to ensure she eats a healthy serving of fruits and vegetables often resorting to the first this and then chocolate tactic which has so far worked.
Having moved back to Philadelphia will hopefully have a more positive impact on our cooking and eating bringing our friends and family to our dinner table more often. We are starting a new tradition of enjoying Sunday Dinners with anyone and everyone who wishes to participate. The only requirement is that anyone who joins in must host a sunday dinner of their own. Our first such dinner was fittingly, last Sunday after enjoying Old City Fest with my sister, brother-in-law and nephew. I served homey chicken stew with root vegetables and peas.
We’ve been rather quiet about our culinary adventures as of late. We haven’t gone hungry of course—mostly because we’ve accepted culinary first aid from my parents and are otherwise preoccupied with a few secret projects which will be revealed in due time. I did manage to make luxurious chicken soup with thin noodles, shredded roasted chicken breast and still toothy vegetables. While it may seem like a lot of work for a few weeknight dinners, it really wasn’t. The chicken stock was made in a slow cooker while I went to work and the chicken breasts take about an hour to roast. I sautéed some veggies while the chicken roasted and threw in noodles two minutes before serving.
The key to this soup being an amazing success is the deconstructed manner in which it is cooked. All the components are cooked to perfection and assembled just before being served. Everything is just right and together, the soup sings with a symphony of textures and flavors. It was perfection. I need to make sure to use the slow cooker a lot more often. The fall and winter seem like the perfect seasons for the type of dishes it is best suited to.
I don’t want to admit it, but the signs that the seasons are changing are everywhere. I am not ready for stews and heavy, cold weather food but something warm and comforting seems very appropriate. I turned to a slow cooker cookbook that I have and found a chicken curry recipe. Sounded delightful and I was intrigued by how easy it was. It was almost a one-pot wonder and I started to doubt just how delicious it would be knowing how easy it is to make. I worried for nothing—it was delicious. Flavorful without being overpowering yet stimulating to the senses.
Since dinner required very little effort and the weather was so gorgeous, we had plenty of time for an after-dinner walk followed by playtime. Happiness is making time for all the important things in your life.
Taking a break from my regular Moments series, I wanted to share some of this week’s culinary happenings at our house. I tried a new recipe for Chicken Marsala on my parents this past weekend while holding down the fort. It took just under an hour total of which only twenty minutes of involved active cooking. Of course there were plenty of leftovers for the week and so I paired that with a potato gratin … just to switch things up. Gratin is a pretty luxurious dish and for that reason, I have never made it before. It turned out as amazing as I imagined it to be and took all of ten minutes to assemble.
I wish I could tell you that there was plenty of cooking going on this weekend, but there wasn’t. In fact, the only cooking that went on was an easy chocolate cake and some dandelion greens. We did this on purpose because we needed a weekend where we could just relax. Right before our every meal Evan or I pulled something out of the fridge and just heated it up. Don’t get me wrong… there wasn’t any takeout this weekend; everything was done ahead of time. We cooked on Friday and admit that I was dog-tired for it, too. But that’s fine because it afforded us a blissful weekend. Among the three things prepared on Friday was a take on a dessert I grew up with as a child — a sort of a bar with a shortbread crust and a nutty filling. The dessert I grew up with is called sochinskoe and it had a walnut filling, but mine has a sweet pecan filling punctuated with tangy, fresh apricots. It is stone fruit season after all and I think there are few things better than perfectly ripe stonefruits. I also made this chicken with cardamom rice and barberries. It was just delicious and I still have leftovers. This recipe is becoming an easy staple at our house. So … what do I consider to be a blissful weekend? One where I got a chance to relax, to unwind and even make a trip to the mall. These are a busy few months for us because we have quite a few family events coming up including the wedding of Evan’s sister. I feel like we have to rest up ahead of time.
There were some serious naps after such fun for Sophia and also for us grown ups. When we did recover from all the play, we cooked and spent time with family. I made pasta from scratch because … because it is delicious when it is handmade and because I had the best helper.
