the flowers are prettier than the food

I really love flowers. Perhaps its the fact that i grew up with a mother obsessed with gardening, and we often had fresh flowers on the table (i'm not kidding about the obsessed part - every time i come home, i find that mother has dug up another section of the yard for more flower beds. its slightly absurd, but very pretty). And perhaps it is also that my aunt used to buy flowers for herself at the market all the time, so that she would have something pretty in a vase. and i always loved stopping by the chinese flower lady in kendall square, making picking up a few daises for friends, or a plant for myself (i kept a cyclamen alive for *months* once, it was amazing, the thing never died!)

but in any event, i love flowers. and i dont have any spots in my apartment that would allow for flower pots - the windows dont have large sills (and arent in spots i could put a table by) and so there is no sun access. at the old apartment, not only did we have large window sills in the kitchen, but we had a back deck that we could put plants on (not that i really did, except for some hanging plants; jamie was the gardener of the 3 of us) but i really have no options at the current apartment. so i am now getting into the habit of picking up some flowers every few weeks at the market, to decorate the kitchen table. a few weeks ago, it was gerber daisies (my favorites). this week? a collection of daffodils, tulips, and other pretty things. definitely a happy sight at the end of the day. at some point, i think i am going to investigate options for a hanging herb garden for my kitchen.

but back to the actual point of this blog: food. my CSA gave me celeriac this week. and yellow beets. and tons of other delicious things (it was a good week) but the important thing is that i got tasty items that are particularly delicious when julienned in a salad. and so...i pulled out my mandoline, and chopped up a TON of vegetables. carrot, beet, celeriac, cucumber, apple. makes quite the delicious salad! except...it makes a delicious salad that will last for DAYS and DAYS because when you chop all of that up you have an absurdly large quantity of chopped vegetables. which really gets tiring and boring after a while...i will be eating them...all week long, before my trip to NYC this weekend!

Happy pi day!

i know, i know, i'm 2 days late with this post, but the important thing is that i *made* the pie on pi day, right?

so as you all (aka my 2 readers) know, i recently joined twitter. and while i mostly only follow friends, i also follow a few foodie-type people, who post about things happening in boston as well as restaurants and food events, etc. and one of those people i follow is @eatboston. well, a week or two ago, he mentioned that he wanted to have a pi day party - a palooza, if you will, to which people would bring pies, and at which much pie would be consumed, in honor of that good ol' 3.14159(...) and i thought...that sounds like fun! i should make a pie!

so while sarah and i were at tupelo last week for dinner (highly recommended, btw) we brainstormed a bit on pies. there were many fun pie ideas, but none solved the problem i have been having lately. the problem of not being able to eat all of the fruit my CSA gives me. i know, they don't give me that much fruit...2 grapefruits and 3 apples a week, i should be able to eat all that, right? well at some point, i got a bit behind, and the fruit just started piling up! i dont know what to do with it all! it seems that even if i take a grapefruit in for breakfast several times a week, the pile never gets smaller! what could i do? make a grapefruit tart, is clearly the answer.

i was quite torn about what the filling should be. i found a recipe online calling for a marscapone filling, which i have never done before but have heard good things, and it sounded fun. but i also sort of wanted a lemon custard. i actually wanted it to be a bit thick, like a lemon meringue pie (without the meringue). tough choice. somewhere between a custard and the lemon meringue filling. similar to the texture of pastry cream that has NOT been lightened by whipped cream. anyway, trying to figure out what to do, and i decided to go with the simplest, and try to marscapone (which, btw, i was unaware of the texture of, having never used it before. i never would have gone with it had i realized just how soft it would be). i was also originally going to be lazy, and use a store-bought pie dough, but it went bad on me! so i had to frantically make a pate sucre that morning! which i didnt have time to chill again after rolling out, so the sides totally shrunk in! so disappointing...

so the pate sucre (which i think i overcooked juuuuust a little bit, because it was just a bit too crunchy), covered in a layer of mixed berry jam, then the marscapone filling (with some crystallized ginger and grapefruit juice and confectioner's sugar), topped with fresh sections of grapefruit. and yes, i sectioned all of those and yes, i had a papercut or something on my hand for the citrus juices to sting, but i made it out with enough nice slices to decorate the top of the pie, for one of the prettier tarts i've ever made. next time, i think i will experiment with the filling a bit more....

most unhealthy greens EVER

tonight, i made what is probably the BEST and the most UNHEALTHY vegetable dish EVER. now, i know i often refer to finding recipes on epicurious, and i never link to them, but this time, i am, because you all need to know how to make this delicious side dish. so here is the link. looking at the recipe now, i see that i was supposed to use 3 bunches of kale, instead of just one. ah well, still delicious (and makes sense considering i totally dont have 6 servings right now, only 2!)

it pretty much tastes like happiness in a dish. perhaps the butter (which i remembered to put in this time) or the carmelized onions, or the pancetta (fatty fatty fatty!) did it, or the amazing combination, but delicious. absolutely delicious. I made some chicken for dinner (really boring - i baked it and didnt even bread it or anything!) and shredded a few pieces to put on top of the kale with some bread. even boring chicken was incredibly delicious when combined with this side dish! i think that i will be making this EVERY time i get kale in my CSA share.

paired it with a Dr. L Reisling that i bought after having it at tupelo the other night with sarah. which was also awesome.

when i'm not being lazy

when i'm not being lazy...i actually cook meals! like, not just putting something together for dinner. i'll actually cook things like breakfast. or lunch. even if its something simple, like a salad, i'll chop up tons of deliciousness to go with it, and make it real. its always amazing how long things can take, too. breakfast this morning? took me like, 40 minutes. because i had to cut and toast the bread, and then spread the delicious goat cheese on it, and then i had to wash all the greens and cut the tomatoes and spin the greens and make a little vinaigrette and then fry the eggs and APPARENTLY i am a granny because these things take me so long. but it is very calming, being so deliberate with food, doing prep, etc. kitchen is my happy place. and i get things like a tasty breakfast out of it too. not pictures is the very tasty smoothie i also made to go with breakfast; a treat after my gym workout this morning.

after running a bunch of errands this afternoon, and enjoying a hot chocolate at bloc 11 in out of the rain, i headed home for more relaxing kitchen time. which included...infusing oil!


i had no clue what to do with the bunch of flatleaf parsley my CSA gave me this week. and then i stumbled upon a recipe, online, for parsley and chive mashed potatoes. which involves blending parsley, chives, and olive oil, and then pressing the mix through a sieve to get the delicious oil. and i did this, with some new EVOO that i purchased at the lovely whole foods for added flavor. didnt get a ton of infused oil out of it though. hard to press the herbs enough to get all the oil out. and the recipe calls for you to just toss the herbs after that! but why would a person do that with all those lovely herbs! instead, half went into the fridge for a salad i have planned for tomorrow or monday (beets, celeriac, apple, etc. it will be exciting), and half went into the freezer for later pesto-like use. and the oil went into my cute little jar for use later this week! i might even drizzle it on roasting potatoes! we'll see! i think i need to infuse oil more often...maybe try other tasty herbs.

chocolate, vanilla, strawberry...i always hated neapolitan ice cream...

okay, so months and months ago, i was at crate and barrel with emily, and i saw these beautiful white scalloped dessert dishes. and i said to emily "can i justify buying those?" and she said "yes! of course you can!" like a good little enabler. but it took me months to figure out what to make with them, because they are rather deep. i thought they might be best with some type of mousse, but what exactly to do...then, my bon appetit magazine had a recipe for a chocolate souffle in it. and though i have always heard that souffles are super complicated, and if you dont time things exactly perfectly, they will fall, and blahblahblahsohardetc. but this recipe claimed to be so easy even a caveman could do it! okay not really but i saw that commercial recently. so i figured, these dishes were the perfect thing to make the souffle in! and it mostly turned out simply - i totally miscalculated the additional cooking time needed, because i was using dishes that hold much more souffle than the recipe called for (who wants only 3/4 a cup of souffle?) but luckily they didnt fall despite coming out of the oven for a minute before they were fully done. so souffle! mmm a tasty dessert choice! but emily and bryan had also given me a bottle of their beer, entropy, so my parents could try it, and entropy goes best with vanilla...so i felt i needed something vanilla to go with it.


i considered a flan, after emily's delicious one a few weeks ago, but i had the fact that you have to turn them upsidedown on a plate for presentation. yes, i understand the whole presentation thing, and the caramel and how flan works, i know, i know, but as you can see, i like to present things in a pretty way. i also decided against creme brulee, because i dont have a torch, and yes, i know that you can make it under the broiler but it isnt the same and dont try to tell me it is. so i thought maybe a sauce to go on it! enter: the creme anglaise. a delicious, delicious sauce. made all the better because i bought a real vanilla bean!


real vanilla bean really makes all the difference, i think. i will have to use one each time i make a real vanilla dessert. the thing is though...they never tell you how you're supposed to use the vanilla bean, in recipes. you just sort of read in recipes "scrape the seeds from the pod" but you never know what it actually looks like. so when i first tried to open the vanilla bean...i had absolutely no idea how. how do you split a vanilla bean? how? how do you scrape tiny little seeds that keep getting all over your hands? well, i found instructions online, successfully scraped out tons of little seeds, and made a delicious creme anglaise (and had very delicious smelling hands after, too).

ended with some delicious, fresh strawberries, to add a little sweetness to round out the dessert. perfect! i had one extra souffle...and after chillin for a bit after baking, it fell! looks so sads...

duck...duck...GOOSE!

so the parentals decided to visit this weekend, and i decided to make dinner friday night. this time, i decided to try making duck. ever since we had it at the modern in nyc at thanksgiving, and it was absolutely incredible, i've wanted to at least attempt to cook something similar. i saw a video a bit ago on how to cook duck breasts correctly (i.e. searing and roasting) and found some recipes online, and figured might as well try it when the family is here, as they wont mind if it fails horribly.

i started the dinner menu with a cold barley salad. (this is after an amuse bouche of pear slices with pancetta and goat cheese, which i forgot to take a picture of)started with barley mostly because...i keep getting barley in my CSA, and i have no clue what to do with it! i tried grinding it into a flour so i could make bread, but i failed horribly. the only option was to cook it like rice, essentially. so, i made a salad of barley, ricotta, greens, onions, and beets, with a lemon vinaigrette. it was...not exceptional. somewhat boring, really. ah well.


we then go to the side dishes of the evening. i totally lucked out with the CSA this week, and got parsnips! yay parsnips! perfect timing, because i found a lovely recipe for carrots and parsnips with a honey rosemary glaze. quiiiiite tasty. crumbled a little pancetta on top for even more deliciousness. very good side dish. the other side dish i went with was braised baby bok choy (butter, broth, and a little bit of sesame oil). wasnt quite as amazing as the first time i made it. but not terrible. guess i could have made the swiss chard i got this week in the farm share instead, but oh well.


and to the main course! i am happy to announce that not only was the duck edible, but it was really tasty too!!! yes, i was successful! how did i make it? well, it started with a trip to savenors on thursday night. the kind butcher helped me pick out some boneless duck breasts with skin, perrrfect. come friday night, i let them sit for 30 minutes or so, and then scored the skin. what i love about frying duck is that you just get it cooking, and the fat starts melting and then you just have a fry pan FILLED with duck fat. it just looks beautiful. horribly unhealthy, but BEAUTIFUL. seared the other side quick once the skin/fat side was nice and browned. poured off some of the fat, and then threw the pan in the oven. 8 sweet minutes later, the duck was perfectly roasted (we wanted it more medium to medium-well than medium-rare, as duck is usually done). rested for 10 minutes as we ate our barley, and then we cut into it and beautiful. beautiful perfect duck!!! but what to put on top of it?


what do you put on duck, i wondered? i needed some type of sauce to put on it, in case i poorly cooked it, or if it had no taste, etc. but what type of sauce?? such a hard decision! i found one online for an orange chipotle sauce. that sounded pretty tasty, but i was worried it might be a bit too spicy. and it definitely did have a tang to it...a nice little zip. but it ended up being really delicious with the duck, rather perfect really. the second sauce is a fig sauce...because i wanted a wine-based sauce, figs are tasty, and father loves figs, so i figured a win win. the sauce was...good, but not quite spectacular. i think that i should have reduced it more - the recipe didnt call for it to be reduced much at all, but i should have known better and boiled it down more, for a thicker sauce.

so overall, it was quite a tasty meal. the dessert was so spectacular it is going to have its own post. mmhmmm.

i am incompetent at cooking meat

oh, no, backlog! earlier this week, i was totally going to upload some of these photos, because i actually cooked things earlier this week! like, during the week! i know! such progress! BUT the night that i finally didnt have broomball, and brought my computer home...i passed out quite promptly after getting in, instead of even opening my computer. and things got busy and busy and busy and its friday night and i havent posted anything. and so i combine two posts into one.

chronologically, i'd like to mention that i cooked kale this week. it was my first time. it was exciting. and delicious. i am a fan of kale. nice and simple, but a tasty green, that one is. yesterday when i was looking through epicurious, i came across a recipe for kale chips...it sounds delicious. i will have to make them the next time i have kale. mmm. kale. much more delicious than swiss chard, which i need to get through this week.


anyway. back to the subject of this post, and the initial photo: this week, i decided to cook up some sausage, to go with some peppers and onions that i made over the weekend. and so we get to the sad truth: i am incompetent at cooking meat. "but jenn, what about that amazing pork dish you made a few weeks back for that dinner party?" you'll say. and "but jenn, how about that taleggio-stuffed, proscuitto-wrapped chicken you baked at that dinner party a while ago?" ...sure, sure, i have occasionally cooked meat quite nicely. for dinner parties. when i am cooking a specific recipe, for a decent amount of people. but cooking meat during the week? for a regular old dinner? with only 1-3 servings of leftovers? oooh i suck at that. i am almost always terrified that i am not cooking meat thoroughly enough. don't know why, i dont think i have ever actually undercooked meat, but i always *worry* that i will.

so i stopped in whole foods the other day, to pick up some sausage. snagged the last sweet italian sausage, as well as a garlic-y one, and decided to cook them up tuesday night. now, i never know the best way to cook sausage. always worried about it being cooked through. but smaller pieces, those should cook faster, right? so if i cut up the sausages with scissors into 1-inch chunks, should cook through nice and fast, right? yeah...doesn't quuuuiiiiite work like that. so then, instead of being worried about cooking through 2 big sausages, you're worried about cooking into the centers of 20 tiny little sausage pieces. which you end up burning/charring in an effort to cook thoroughly. yep.

terrible at cooking meat.

but edible! and nicely balanced with some kale, potatoes, and delicata squash.

dont forget the butter

there is a reason things with tons of butter and fat taste better. thats because FAT TASTES GOOD! it is important and vital for happy food. and if anyone out there has ever compared dufours puff pastry to pepperidge farm...you know that the REAL stuff is better! the real stuff, with gobs and gobs of butter that MAY be unhealthy for you, sure, but is delicious! i dont want to get started on a diatribe, because i need to get back to work, BUT every time i see "weight-loss" recipes that have Splenda as an ingredient, or non-fat everything, or egg-beaters...i want to beat someone. i would rather be fat and enjoy my dinner than eat healthy/diet food. pretty much how i make all decisions. but i digress...

at work we have a soup club. essentially, every week, a member of the soup club brings in soup on friday for the members of the club to eat for lunch. generally accompanied by tasty bread, occasionally other sides like cheese or pancetta to sprinkle on top. Now, I don't make soup very often, but I joined soup club this year because I CAN make this really delicious butternut squash soup (with cider cream. epicurious that shit, it is DELICIOUS). so when my turn came around in december, i made butternut squash soup with cider cream and it was delicious and all marveled and everything was right in the world.

and then we decided to do a second round of soup club. because hey, we all like soup. so i needed to make a 2nd soup. well i couldnt make the same one, now could i?? no! and everyone lately has been making their soup in a crock pot, and so i thought "well that makes things easy! i should make soup in a crock pot!" ...except as mentioned before, i dont really know how to make many soups. out came the crockpot cookbook, and i settled upon a "creamy vegetable soup" which looked tasty and would help me use up some of the sweet potatoes chillin in my fridge.

last night i chopped up a bunch of vegetables, threw them in the crock pot with some chicken broth, popped the lid on, hit the "low" switch, and sailed off into sweet sleepy oblivion (okay, thats a lie, i was up cooking for a dinner party i'm doing tonight for another 2-3 hours, BUT the point is that i didnt need to do any more work on the soup! and it cooked while i eventually slept!)

this morning, as i drove to work, trying to avoid any hills or bumps that might make the soup spill out the lid (unsuccessfully, i might add) i had a thought. was i supposed to put butter in the soup? hmm. hmmm. i am pretty sure that the ingredient after the onions in the recipe was butter. butter. you know, to soften the onions and generally add a little flavor? you know, that tasty thing? got to work and checked out a similar recipe online. yep. butter. tried another one. yep, that one had butter too. remember back to the butternut squash soup i made before? had butter in it. the parsnip soup i made a few weeks ago for a dinner party? butter in it. the soup i made today, for a dozen other people, my cooking reputation on the line?? no butter in it.

i am so depressed. i, unintentionally, made healthy diet soup. and it tastes like healthy diet soup too. because it lacks BUTTER!